Ponies used to help restore rare grassland habitat at Bridgelea

Four hardy moorland ponies have this month been brought in to graze a rare Culm grassland site in central Devon as part of Devon Wildlife Trust's Working Wetlands project. The 2.5 hectare site at Bridgelea near Sampford Courtenay had been in need of attention for several years. The Working Wetlands project awarded the landowners a grant to carry out scrub clearance and install stockproof fencing which has enabled the re-introduction of grazing. The four ponies are part of the Devon Wildlife Trust's Grazing Links scheme, an initiative which brings people with livestock together with landowners in need of grazing for their holdings. It is hoped that the ponies will help to open up the habitat and allow a broad range of wild flower species to become more widely established across the site. This increase in the range of wild flowers will benefit a host of insects, which in turn will support healthy populations of birds and small mammals. This initiative was only made possible by the generous funding of Devon Waste Management. Their support has enabled the Working Wetlands project to set up and administer a small grant award initiative which offers landowners financial support to carry out capital works on wildlife-rich sites in the Culm Measures. Devon Wildlife Trust's Mike Symes oversaw the introduction of grazing and said: "Bridgelea is a great site but its value for wildlife was being lost due to scrub encroachment and a lack of grazing. Now, as a result of the funding provided by Devon Waste Management, the important Culm grassland habitat will be restored through improved, sympathetic land management." Bob and Joy Tucker, the landowners at Bridgelea, added: "When we moved here we knew that the land was in need of some careful management, but we didn't know where to start. Devon Wildlife Trust has enabled us to embark on this exciting project and we are really looking forward to seeing the field transformed year by year, allowing  the more delicate and vulnerable species that could not compete with the rushes to  establish themselves."

Ponies at Bridgelea photo copyright Devon Wildlife Trust 

Working Wetlands is a seven year landscape scale project working across 65,000 hectares of the Culm Natural Area. It has been supported by South West Water, Tubney Charitable Trust, The Environment Agency, Devon County Council, Devon Waste Management, GrantScape and Natural England.