Pudsham meadows at Buckland in the Moor are valuable wildlife habitats. According to Dartmoor National Park ecologists, they stand as the finest hay meadows within the National Park. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan identifies such fields as Priority Habitat due to their alarming decline over the past half-century. Now, they are highly localized, and Dartmoor alone accounts for about 6% of the national resource—Pudsham is truly a gem. They have been managed by Devon Perseveration Association since 2016.

Between October and December five pure breed Dartmoor ponies are brought to graze the unique and ancient wildflower meadows of Pudsham, Buckland-in-the-Moor. The pure Dartmoor pony has plunged in numbers from 30 thousand in the 1950's to a mere 1,500 today due to interbreeding with Dartmoor Hill ponies and lack of demand but with their unique grazing ability they are experts at preserving the health and ecology of wildflower meadows such as Pudsham.  DPA volunteers look after the ponies while they are at Pudsham and manage the meadows throughout the year.

On looking after Dartmoor Ponies brought in to graze Pudsham Hay Meadows, Valley of the East Webburn: December 2025.

These meadows where I volunteer for DPA, are like a melody rising and falling throughout the year. But they not only modulate their own change, ponies and people change them too. Pulling up suckers of blackthorn and willow in October, doing the work bear and elk once did DPA volunteers  kept the meadows open. Now in November it is the turn of the Dartmoor ponies and during their stay at Pudsham DPA volunteers check them daily and fill up their water troughs.

Icy day but the sun is warm. On the west side of the meadow between the sloe bushes and the ancient hedge wall the haze of the low sun sheens the tussocks and the gold leaves of the birch tree melt. Like a farrier's rasp frost has smoothed the world. Clouds appear. The sun drops. Insects  shiver, shift – some creak in their winter nocturne among the leaf mould. I have watched the living world here through all the seasons and now the wild meadow needs to be cropped to enable new growth in the Spring. But it is done naturally here at Pudsham. Perhaps mankind works best when we tame nature with nature. I was just thinking this when the Dartmoor ponies grazed into the scene before me among the tussocks. Their thick winter fur soft as thistle down blowing in the air, their muscular flanks the colour of the chestnuts I gathered in the forest.  

The youngest pony approaches me, tries to nuzzle my arm. I turn away to discourage human interaction. I walk through the herd to check the pony trough – the spring has surfeited – and the wool-warm, soft meadow is drenched and bare of life; the water sloughs over the lip of the trough like a green silk sheet wetted in sunlight. A hoary haired elder turns, eyes me and holds me still in her gaze. She is darkest oak brown with broad wise brow. They are otherworldly. The meadow is chthonic too; all has dropped to the other world and animate life is bleak. But these are the hardy Dartmoor ponies adapted to the cold and wet. They look so natural – so good in the field.

Now the ponies will give the new spring luxuriance. They will enable the tiniest creature, the springtails and the microarths that make up the surprising biomass of a healthy unimproved meadow (a tonne of soil species live in every five acres of wild unimproved meadow) to thrive and provide the foundation for life above ground. In the world we can see; the microhabitat among the plants where the pollinators and propagators feed and down in the green kingdom where the munchers and mutualists work.  And deeper down, at the roots of the plants where nutrients made soluble by the soil food web are drawn back up to our world, into the health of the summer trees and flowers in full leaf. For all the beauty, form, colour and shape, fescue and cocksfoot, soft rush and  spiky purple moor grass feeds the ponies and their droppings recycle nutrients back into the neutral, quiet earth here. 

On my last evening looking after the ponies  I watched them graze Small Field. They moved from place to place cropping a mouthful here and a mouthful there then regrouped and moved to another place. How slow and graceful. Why do we need to be so fast when we could be living slowly and more naturally like these ponies do? They look so at ease and natural at Pudsham.

By the stream of the Webburn far below the meadows in the valley I found what I believe to be a fairy horseshoe. It lay in a salmon pool by a ford shod deep in the gorge of the East-Dart river; a ford where the Dartmoor pony packhorses splashed through from the highlands to the lowlands with their loads of tin and food for miners. I dipped my fingers into the pool and the tiny horse shoe almost slipped onto my thumb;  I am looking at it now as I write this; it may be a rusted trace of horse-harness but, to me, it is a fairy Dartmoor pony horse shoe and carries all the luck. I hope they carry the luck for their own survival.