MP raises Moor concerns with Dartmoor National Park Authority
18th March 2010
Geoffrey Cox last Friday visited Princetown to meet the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) and to discuss the various issues affecting Dartmoor National Park.
Geoffrey Cox, MP for Torridge & West Devon last Friday visited Princetown to meet the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) and to discuss the various issues affecting Dartmoor National Park.
The MP was particularly concerned to raise the need for dialogue and closer engagement with local communities in West Devon and was briefed on the plans and progress that the DNPA had made in this regard. He also raised the current under-stocking of livestock on the Moor. Geoffrey Cox suggested that he and the Authority might work together in looking at ways of tackling the underlying causes of this growing problem.
Geoffrey Cox said "it is vital that the Moor should remain a place for farmers and farming people who look after the land to maintain appropriate levels of stock and to keep the landscape as we know it today. DEFRA's inability to see that the current system of incentives and payments are in danger of threatening this legacy is another reason to see the back of this failed and discredited Ministry. Hill farming is vital to the well being of Dartmoor, but while it is no longer profitable to keep stock on the Moor, numbers will decline. I believe a Conservative government will have a fresh will to tackle this problem".
