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Who decides what Dartmoor can carry?

Farmers and graziers on Dartmoor are being squeezed from several directions at once, and most people outside farming have no idea why. This is my attempt to explain it in plain terms.

I have a soft spot for this one. About twenty-five years ago I did a placement with English Nature, now Natural England, and part of the job was burning purple moor grass on Dartmoor. A quarter of a century on, that same grass sits right at the heart of the problem.

How grazing on the moor works

Much of the open moor is common land. A landowner owns it, but local farmers hold rights to graze their animals on it. Those rights are attached to their farms and pass down with them, often through generations of the same family.

The animals are cattle, sheep and ponies. Each grazes differently, and between them they keep the moor in shape. Cattle pull at long, coarse grass. Sheep nibble short and pick out the tastier plants. Ponies eat almost anything, including rough grass and gorse.

The question everyone is arguing about is simple to ask and hard to answer: how many animals should be on the moor?

The minister comes to the moor

On 21 September, Farming Minister Stephen Morgan visited Dartmoor at the invitation of local MP Sir Geoffrey Cox. He toured Prison Farm near Princetown and saw for himself a stretch of high moor smothered in purple moor grass.

Around sixty farmers then met him at the Two Bridges Hotel. The frustration in the room was clear. Several said they had received letters from Natural England telling them to cut their stock by so much that their farms would no longer be viable. The minister said he would ask his officials to make sure farmers’ concerns were taken into account.

It matters that he came. It matters more what happens next.

The problems farmers and graziers are facing

Being told to cut numbers

Much of the moor is protected for its wildlife and habitats, and most of those protected areas are in poor condition. Natural England has long blamed too much grazing as one of the main causes. Its answer has been to ask farmers to cut their stock, and then cut again. Grazing has already been reduced several times since the 1990s.

Too few animals causes problems too

This is the part people miss. When numbers drop too far, the moor does not recover. It goes wild in the wrong way.

The government’s own independent review of Dartmoor, led by David Fursdon in 2023, put it plainly:

The problem with vegetation management on Dartmoor is as much one of under-grazing as much as over-grazing.

Independent review of protected site management on Dartmoor, 2023

Purple moor grass spreads across large areas. It is only worth eating for a few weeks in late spring, so animals avoid it the rest of the year. Gorse and bracken creep in. In places the growth is chest high.

One Dartmoor farmer made a point recently that I think is spot on. Stock numbers have been cut so far that the animals now gather in the places they like best and overgraze them, while most of the moor gets little or no grazing at all.

Sheep then go looking for heather instead, and the heather suffers. That leads to calls for even fewer animals, and round it goes. Fursdon called this a “vicious cycle”.

The overgrown moor also brings practical problems:

  • A build-up of dry, flammable vegetation and a growing risk of large wildfires
  • Ground that is harder and more dangerous to walk and work
  • Animals straying further, because with fewer of them there is less to hold a flock or herd in its usual area

Animals that cannot simply be moved

Moorland flocks and herds are bred to the moor. They learn where to graze, and they build up resistance to the tick-borne diseases found there. Take them off and that resistance can be lost. A farmer cannot just send stock elsewhere for the winter and bring them back.

Very thin margins

Farming on Dartmoor barely pays. Government figures for upland livestock farms show farming itself running at a loss, with support payments keeping businesses afloat. The old Basic Payment is being phased out, and farmers are relying more and more on environmental schemes. If those schemes come with deep stock cuts, the numbers stop working.

Fursdon was blunt about it: “Farming on Dartmoor is economically extremely marginal.” The review also found that Dartmoor’s farmers “do not know how they are going to make up for the loss” of the Basic Payment.

Not knowing what comes next

In early 2026 the High Court ruled that the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council, the body that regulates grazing on the commons, had never properly assessed how many animals the moor can carry. It has had that legal duty since 1985.

The court did not say the moor is overgrazed, and it did not set any numbers. It said the Council must now do a proper, evidence-based assessment. Until that is done, nobody knows what stocking levels will be allowed.

A breakdown in trust

The 2023 Fursdon review found that the relationship between commoners and Natural England had broken down badly. Farmers felt changes were sprung on them, and communication had dried up. On Natural England’s approach, the review concluded that it “has not responded successfully to this challenge”. Rebuilding that trust will take time.

Some good news on ponies

In July 2026 the government took Dartmoor ponies out of stocking-rate calculations in new environmental agreements. That recognises the job ponies do in grazing rough vegetation. Farmers welcomed it, but many now worry that sheep will be the next target.

What this means for land and property

Grazing rights are property. They are part of what a moorland farm is worth. When nobody knows how many animals a right will support, it becomes harder to put a value on it, and harder to plan.

That affects families planning to pass a farm on, tenants and landlords agreeing rents, buyers, and banks lending against land. If you own or rent a holding with common rights, it is worth checking your rights are correctly registered and knowing exactly what agreements sit on the land, before the assessment lands rather than after.

What happens next

The Commoners’ Council has to carry out its assessment. Alongside that, the Dartmoor Land Use Management Group, set up after the 2023 review, has been asked to draw up a grazing plan for the whole moor.

If both are done properly, with farmers involved and real evidence gathered, they could finally give people some certainty. Fursdon’s starting point was simple: “Dartmoor needs to be grazed.” The question now is how much, where and when, and getting that right matters for the moor and for the families who farm it.

Rupert Geering MSc MRICS, Geering Chartered Surveyors

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