A gunman is shooting ponies on Dartmoor. Yes, it’s true; a trained sniper is wandering the moor, singling out ponies one by one. But don’t worry – it’s probably not as bad as you think. Charlotte Faulkner, a conservationist, is shooting them with contraceptive darts in a bid to control the number of foals born each year.
It might sound like a bizarre idea, but actually, perhaps it makes perfect sense. The current problem that the Dartmoor hill ponies – and their owners – face is one of overbreeding. While hill ponies are needed to keep the gorse and natural ecosystem of the moor under control, the natural result of mixing mares and stallions on the moorland is an excess of foals. In the current economic climate, these foals often sell for less than £10 a pony at the sales, and in 2010, it was revealed that slaughtered ponies were being sold to Dartmoor Zoo, where their flesh was used as tiger food.
In my opinion that’s better than them being killed and the meat wasted, but stories such as the one above – as well as the ‘horsemeat scandal’ – were what sparked Princess Anne’s suggestion last year that perhaps horses would be better off if they were part of the human food chain (properly labeled, please). There are increasing numbers of unwanted ponies, and allowing the ones on Dartmoor to breed indiscriminately will only fuel the glut, and lead to more cases of neglect.
But perhaps this tactic could be used on other animals as well. Grey squirrels have been deemed to be such a problem, both to red squirrels and to woodland, that the government is offering funding to landowners who have problems with the rodents. As well as helping landowners out money-wise, they’re also funding research into contraceptives to try and curb their breeding. If it works for the ponies of Dartmoor, then why not for squirrels as well? At least that will keep the anti-cull faction happy.
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