“Fly-grazing” horses in lawmakers’ sights as Welsh Government considers Bill

DAMIAN LE BAS

Editor

Above: a group of cobs at Appleby Fair, which was granted a Royal charter in 1685 by James II. Now, a rise in the number of abandoned horses and ponies has been blamed on a variety of causes including poor export markets

THE Welsh Assembly is considering new laws aimed at tackling ‘fly-grazing’, meaning leaving animals to graze on land without permission.

The Control of Horses (Wales) Bill is mostly concerned with ‘fly-grazing’ horses, and “makes provision for local authorities to seize, impound and dispose of horses which are in public places without lawful authority, or are on other land without the consent of the occupier of the land.”

The Welsh Government has been consulting on the issue since March this year, and organisations in England are hoping Westminster will follow suit and look into the issue.

In July, a coalition of six groups including the RSPCA and the RedWings horse sanctuary questioned “how current laws permit horses to suffer needlessly,” adding that 7,000 horses are “at risk of needing rescue” in England and Wales.

The National Farmers Union has already produced an “action plan” on fly-grazing. In the document, released in January and titled Fly-grazing: The Challenge of Unauthorised Horse Grazing, the NFU said that around six per cent of their members, or well over a thousand farmers, had “direct experience of this problem.”

“We use the term ‘fly-grazing’ to describe unauthorised grazing of land by horses and ponies, whether or not the horses’ owner is in breach of a previous agreement or has simply placed the horses on the land without any discussion with the owner or tenant of the land,” said the NFU.

The document adds that: “Fly-grazing should be made a criminal offence, to ensure that action can be taken swiftly and offenders brought to justice.”

The Welsh Government’s own action plan also suggests compulsory fencing on common land, “in particular where there is an accident risk and horses are killed”. It mentions the Verderers in the New Forest, and asks whether they might have advice on dealing with those who graze animals on commons without permission.

There is also a recommendation that commoners’ ponies should be removed from commons during winter as they may not be fit to survive the harsh conditions, and that a “castration programme” could be introduced to prevent the breeding of unwanted animals.

Neither the Bill itself nor the NFU action plan make any specific reference to Gypsies and Travellers. However Alun Davies, the deputy agriculture minister for Wales, told the BBC last year that many horses found fly-grazing were of the Welsh Gypsy Cob type- traditionally bred by Romanies and Travellers and sold at fairs including Appleby, which was granted a Royal charter in 1685 by James II. Cobs are also sold abroad, however, and Mr Davies has also claimed there is a link between the issue of ‘fly-grazing’ and a falling export market for Welsh Cobs.

Elsewhere, journalists have explicitly linked ‘fly-grazing’ to Gypsies and Travellers. Last year, the website of Horse & Hound magazine mentioned an unnamed landowner who “has had a group of 21 gypsy-owned horses fly-grazing her Somerset land for 18 months”.

Specific cases are not always referred to. In August, journalist Tom Rowley wrote in The Telegraph that: “Horses abandoned by travellers are often “fly-grazed”, meaning they are left to graze illegally on public or private land”, but did also mention “the number of relatively well-off owners who are abandoning their horses when they lose their jobs.”