Dear supporters,

The council have put the grazing issue on their agenda for the next HEWEB public committee meeting, details here.

Please come along if you wish to attend to support us. 

Note applications to speak mush be made in advance.  We hope this meeting gives us an opportunity to make the strength of our concerns know.

Unfortunately the council’s intention seems only to justify the “delegated decision” (i.e. council agreement was not in place), rather than addressing the jeopardy Russells and Epona Trust have been placed under, or explaining why this harmful change was necessary.  

EBC are still claiming to be working with Russells and Epona Trust to find alternative grazing but admitted on Monday there was none available; a contradiction which is very confusing and concerning.

It seems an assessment was made to establish some benefit from the new use, however no details are provided. We would like to know how it was established that alpacas provide greater community health and wellbeing than our horses have over the last 50 years, and how replacing a native species with a non-native one is an improvement to biodiversity (in the natural sense, not what you’d find in a zoo!) Both claims seem highly dubious.  

There is lack of consistency, clarity and no discernible sense to the decision. 

We hope the council meeting will be an opportunity to have our perspective heard and hopefully our concerns for our horses and the potential loss to the community acknowledged and addressed.