Farmers back Exmoor Mire Restoration Project

Farmers who drained Exmoor in the past have been cooperating with a moorland wildlife restoration project. The Exmoor Mire Restoration Project, hosted by Exmoor National Park Authority, has been blocking the ditches with the aim of restoring the boggy moors to their former glory.

For one Exmoor family the Mire Restoration Project has been just another chapter in the long history of the moorlands. The May family who own the Squallacombe moors, near Simonsbath, were encouraged to drain the moors in the 1970s by the Ministry of Agriculture. The aim then was to improve the food growing productivity of the land.

Robin May remembers how wet the moors were before drainage and how they used to quake when you walked on them. He recalls getting stuck on Squallacome in a Landrover when he was an enthusiastic farming college student. He is also able to point out how much the moorland streams have eroded down the hillside, taking hundreds of tons of rubble downstream into the rivers, since the ditches were cut.

Times have changed and people now realise that moorland management should include looking after the rivers and wildlife as well as the important task of producing food for the nation. The ditches on Squallacome moor were blocked up last year by agricultural contractors A&B of Kentisbury nr. Barnstaple and Robin May is pleased with the results.

The pools created behind the ditch blocks are full of water and the moor feels like it’s quaking again. This winter we had flocks of Golden Plover on Squallacombe and we look forward to seeing more wildlife in the spring. Our main business is farming and long may it continue to be so but the Exmoor Mire Restoration project is a fascinating idea and we are pleased to be involved with it. It also helps to create work for agricultural contractors who are having a hard time of things at the moment with financial cut backs”.

Project manager David Smith said: We are very grateful to all the farmers involved with the Mire Restoration Project who have made a generous commitment to the future of Exmoor, in a time of climatic and agricultural uncertainty. Although the work has taken place at no cost to the landowners there are no financial rewards either, so their involvement really has been for the wider benefits of the moorland.”