The last ponies on the moor

What do Dartmoor farmers, equestrians, YIMBYs and tech bros have in common? They are all at the mercy of Natural England.

This isn’t the start of a dreadful joke. It is a description of how England is now governed. Not by ministers who face the voters, but by an unelected quango that decides whether there needs to be a cull of Dartmoor’s semi-wild ponies, and whether we can turn on Britain’s largest nuclear power station.

I farm beef and sheep on Exmoor. To the south, on Dartmoor, Natural England has drawn up new grazing contracts that could remove up to 90 per cent of the semi-feral pony herds. They have grazed those commons for longer than England has been a country, and they manage the moor in ways no machine can replicate, eating the coarse purple moor grass that cattle and sheep leave behind. Take them off, and the moor does not become a nature reserve; it becomes a wasteland of Molinia and gorse, choking out our native orchids and flowers.

The ponies of Exmoor came back from fewer than fifty animals after the Second World War, but what happens on Dartmoor could affect the South West’s other major moor.

This is not the first time this has happened. Only a few years ago, when grazing agreements on Dartmoor lapsed, families who had farmed those commons for generations were threatened with enforcement action for carrying on as they always had.

The row grew enough that the Government commissioned an independent review under David Fursdon. Its verdict was damning. Natural England, it found, must completely change its approach to farmers on Dartmoor and recognise the scale of the challenge it faced in rebuilding trust.

Yet just a few years on, here we are again. A faceless government organisation unaccountable to ministers is threatening to fundamentally change the way society works.

There is still no coherent scheme for the uplands, the hardest land to farm and some of the least profitable. Support payments make up around a third of the average farm’s income, and far more on the hills. If the regulatory framework doesn’t back them, the financial framework certainly won’t.

Natural England must recognise the role that diverse grazing has in controlling Molinia grass and gorse. It must protect our moorlands, and the ponies and farmers who sustain them, for the long term.

Which brings us, improbably, to nuclear power.

At Hinkley Point C, more than £700 million is being spent on protecting fish from the power station’s cooling intakes. An acoustic deterrent nicknamed the “fish disco” blasts sound underwater to frighten the animals away. For all that money, the developer’s own modelling expects to save a fraction of a single salmon a year.

The whole package costs more than twice the entire annual budget the Government spends on Natural England — to save roughly one salmon every twelve years.

Natural England will say that this has to happen because the Severn estuary is a protected habitat, and you may not lawfully kill protected fish to cool a reactor. And the body whose statutory job is to judge whether harm to that habitat can be ruled out is Natural England itself.

The Environment Agency holds the permit and the Secretary of State signs the planning consent, but the conservation verdict that drives both is the agency’s. In May, Natural England published a blog insisting it was enabling the project, not blocking it, and that its advice was grounded in the Habitats Regulations.

The same logic blocks the homes a young family needs. Natural England’s nutrient neutrality advice has held up an estimated 150,000 houses across seventy-odd local authorities, a rule it inherited from the EU and then expanded in 2022 to cover yet more of the country. Developers have resorted to buying and shutting down pig and trout farms to earn the credits to build at all.

I want protection that works, and one where, when it fails, the person responsible can be sacked for getting it wrong

I do not want less protection for nature. I want protection that works, and one where, when it fails, the person responsible can be sacked for getting it wrong. The honest case against Natural England is not that it cares too much for curlews and salmon. It is that it confuses enforcing regulation with delivering outcomes, delays to Hinkley will mean more emissions, not less; removing ponies from the moor will mean fewer orchids, not more.

The answer is to let markets find the best outcome where they can, and where the state must act, to do it through local officers who are properly funded, properly accountable, and answerable to the place they serve. Government that does less, and does it better.

Being a poor country is a choice. If we allow Natural England to carry on regulating us, we are choosing to be poorer and weaker, and to see the ponies gone from our moors.