The Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor was commissioned earlier this year by the Secretary of State for the Environment, following a furore which broke out between commoners – farmers with grazing rights across the moor, including its most treasured areas for wildlife, the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) – and Natural England, the body responsible for ensuring SSSIs are in a fit state and managed well.  

One of Natural England’s roles within that is the administration of agri-environment agreements: schemes which, quite reasonably, provide financial support to land managers in recognition of their role in enhancing land for nature, the environment and people. Public money for public goods. However, as many of the agri-environment schemes on Dartmoor came up for renewal – and as the deteriorating state of Dartmoor’s SSSI’s came into sharper focus – so it became clear that change was required. Cue aforementioned furore.  

Of course, the situation is much more complex than this, which is why an expert panel was convened to look at the evidence and plot a way forward for Dartmoor’s SSSIs and their guardians. This panel was led by David Fursdon, someone for whom I hold a great deal of respect. The challenging and increasingly politicised situation demanded someone of David’s calibre. So the question is, where are we now and what fate awaits Dartmoor’s special wildlife? 

One thing that is immediately clear on reading the review is that is has a thorough grasp of the range of issues affecting Dartmoor’s protected sites, acknowledging how deep-rooted many of them are. It confronts the facts head on: that Dartmoor’s SSSIs are in a poor state – worse on average than SSSIs outside of National Parks – and that its biodiversity is in alarming decline. In recent years we have lost species such as ring ouzel and golden plover and many more are in perilous decline or teetering on the edge, such as curlew and whinchat. The first paragraph of the report ends, “the way Dartmoor is managed needs to change radically and urgently to address these issues”. Few could disagree.  

I'm delighted that the review recommends placing the utmost importance on ‘re-wetting’ the blanket bogs, arguably our most important upland habitat. Restoring these peatlands to their natural state – destroyed by drainage and other human activities – is good for wildlife, including the world’s most southerly population of breeding dunlin. It’s good for water quality and flood resilience, the bogs acting like sponges, holding water back which would otherwise be gushing down the hill. And it’s good for climate change: functioning blanket bog stores and sequesters incredible amounts of atmospheric carbon. 

Restoring peatlands on Dartmoor is not cheap or easy though, especially given the history of military use across the moor. The report recommends increased investment in peatland restoration and I would echo this strongly: there are few more impactful wrongs we can right, to address the twin nature & climate crises. Government needs to do all it can to accelerate this. It also recommends, quite rightly, that the Ministry of Defence play a more proactive role in supporting this work. 

There is mention of extending woodlands and providing space for more trees, which again is to be welcomed. Dartmoor’s woodlands – including its treasured temperate rainforests – are amongst the UK’s finest, but all too often they are artificially hemmed in, a victim of the binary way in which land is used. 

In many ways, the review offers a refreshing challenge to the current paradigm and encourages debate on more controversial issues, such as swaling (the use of burning to manage vegetation). It asks good questions of protected site legislation and the application of agri-environment schemes, and how they might take a more strategic landscape-scale approach, as has been the case in the New Forest. We are seeing more of this whole landscape approach in action through the welcome introduction of Landscape Recovery pilots: tailored, place-based schemes, which reward innovation and long-term thinking to benefit farming and nature together. Dartmoor hosts three of these pilots, including one led by Devon Wildlife Trust in East Dartmoor. 

At the heart of the report is a recommendation to establish a new Land-Use Management Group focused on Dartmoor’s protected areas, independently chaired and involving all the relevant stakeholders. The group is charged with developing a land-use plan, to aid objective decision-making. It is a good recommendation and one which I suspect was inevitable, given the impasse we had reached. 

So I am encouraged by some of the medium-term and much-needed changes which should be prompted by this review. But I am left still with one grave concern: where is the urgency?  

As has been acknowledged, Dartmoor’s most precious habitats and species are on a precipice. If they continue to be managed as current, there will be critical, and in some places irreparable, damage over the coming years. Yet in the short term, it is recommended that the previous agri-environment agreements are ‘rolled over’ for another year or two (having already rolled over this year). In effect, public money will continue to be used to support livestock grazing systems which we know are harming some of our most special places. Assenting damage to legally protected landscapes. 

Not the “radical and urgent change” mooted at the head of the report.  

Nobody pretends that changes to grazing are easy. And it is critical that the commoners – who work incredibly hard in the most challenging of environments – are well supported to deliver the management that the moor requires. There is simply no alternative: grazing the moor isn’t like turning a tap on & off. It requires a skill of craft and heritage of livestock which is built up over generations. Dartmoor’s commoners alone hold those keys.  

Radical and urgent change would mean better financial and practical support for commoners to graze differently, and to play their part in driving the restoration of Dartmoor’s bogs, heathlands, and woodlands. Yes, that might require some additional money, especially in the short-term as transitions are made. But is anyone happy with how public money is currently being spent on Dartmoor, without the results nature so urgently needs?  

So yes, let’s take the time to invest in better ways of governing Dartmoor’s habitats, which move us beyond the polemics of recent years. But in the meantime, I plead of Government to take heed of the urgency required in the short-term and to get behind Natural England – they need to be better-resourced and empowered, and the scapegoating needs to end. The clock is ticking and a few more years of the status quo is all it will take to call time out on much of what makes Dartmoor special. Once we lose the bubbling call of the curlew or the haunting whistle of dunlin, we may well never hear them again.