Tony Whitehead lives and works on Dartmoor. He has a passionate interest in the natural world and nature conservation and is an environmental campaigner. He is involved with a number of local groups including the Chagford Climate and Ecological Emergency Working Group and Extinction Rebellion. In March 2020 he helped organise the first Dartmoor People's Assembly.
There’s been a deluge of misinformation recently about ponies on Dartmoor. Dartmoor Nature Alliance’s Tony Whitehead looks at the origins and potential impacts of the current “pony campaigning”. He starts by looking at the origins of agri-environment schemes, which are central to this “debate”, and then how the campaigning in itself poses a threat to […]
Nature-rich peatland habitats are to be better protected under plans set out by the Government today (Monday 31 March), which would ban burning on peat in the uplands, improving health and wellbeing of people in nearby communities. This is a very welcome statement from the government today. It recognises the value of our precious peatlands […]
The Dartmoor Nature Alliance (DNA) has been launched this week to campaign to restore nature on Dartmoor. The group has been started by local ecologists, environmental campaigners, and land managers who are increasingly concerned about the condition of Dartmoor for nature and the lack of progress on halting and reversing wildlife decline in the National […]
Dartmoor Environmental campaigner Tony Whitehead looks at the Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor published this week and asks whether it will help nature restoration in this precious landscape … When I first skimmed through the Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor that was published this week, my initial reaction was […]
On Saturday September 30, around 300 people gathered at Princetown to show their passion for creating a wilder Dartmoor. The “March for Wild Dartmoor” was organised by Wildcard, a growing grassroots movement of ordinary people, campaigners and experts who want to put pressure on the country’s biggest landowners to commit to ambitious rewilding projects as […]
Nature in Dartmoor National Park is in a poor state. A new piece of legislation being debated this week in the House of Lords could help change that – and put nature’s recovery at the heart of the purpose of all our National Parks and AONBs. But will the Government do the right thing? Dartmoor […]
The mystery of the Dartmoor Gift Pony! This one is all about who’s going to pay for the independent review of farming on Dartmoor. At the Dartmoor debate the other day, Geoffrey Cox (MP for Torridge and West Devon) could not have been clearer in his call for an independent reviewer to consider the current […]
There has been much heated debate over the past few weeks about the future of livestock farming on the Dartmoor commons. Tony Whitehead takes a closer look at the issues … all is not what it seems … Throughout this tale, one key thing must be borne in mind. A large proportion of the Dartmoor […]
Here’s a thing about detail and why it matters. Defra missed the deadline for setting Environment Act targets on Oct 28. But they have suggested a bunch of targets in the consultation and there’s a REALLY important target missing. In a nutshell, as it stands, there is NO proposed target for improving the condition of […]
We are addicted to fossil fuels, so the news that European oil and gas supplies may be interrupted by the current global geopolitical situation linked to the unravelling humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is focusing minds. ‘Something must be done’ before the lights go out and the home fires stop burning. However, in a myopia we […]
Reaching out across the seas Hold out our hands to refugees Make the world a better place To put a smile on everyone’s face Stop the bombing, join together International friends forever This poem by primary school children, read by Exeter’s Pete the Poet, opened a rally organised by Stop the War Coalition. More than […]
Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall gathered with Plymothians today to stage a symbolic silent funeral procession through Plymouth to Barclays bank. This was part of a “Better Without Barclays” campaign, a UK-wide movement calling out the investments that Barclays make in the fossil fuel industry. The funeral march, complete with coffin, […]
Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) staged a protest today [Friday 25 February] outside Devon County Hall in Exeter to highlight the county council’s continued investment in fossil fuels through its pension fund. XR rebels scaled scaffolding above the entrance to County Hall and lowered a huge banner emblazoned with “Stop Funding Fossil Fuels”. The […]
Peat is an accumulation of slowly decaying plant matter formed in cool wet conditions. It is a remarkable substance and one of the most important stores of carbon on the planet. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), globally the remaining area of near-natural peatland (more than three million km²) contains more […]
If you live on the Somerset Levels and Moors, ask simply “will what I am hearing improve water quality here?”. Because unless national policy makes a real difference where you are, it is largely useless. We are in a nature and climate emergency. We need the government to show leadership and ambition that delivers action because they fully understand what this means.
In the first two parts of this series I looked at the parlous state of the Dartmoor Special Area of Conservation. I gave reasons for how it came to be in such a poor state, and covered the influence of post war agricultural policy. In this final part, I will look at what can be […]
In the second of three articles, environmental campaigner Tony Whitehead considers how Dartmoor’s nature came to be in such a poor state. In part one, I paid attention to two of Dartmoor’s key wildlife habitats: the blanket bogs and upland heaths. Over the past 150 years, Dartmoor’s blanket bogs were cut for peat, drained for […]
Environmental campaigner Tony Whitehead considers the extent to which Dartmoor’s nature is protected, and the shocking condition of its protected sites. On 28 September Boris Johnson committed to protecting 30 per cent of the UK’s land by 2030. A fine ambition, of course, and to be welcomed. In the government statement that accompanied the announcement […]
