A gunman is shooting ponies on Dartmoor. Yes, it’s true; a trained sniper is wandering the moor, singling out ponies one by one. But don’t worry – it’s probably not as bad as you think. Charlotte Faulkner, a conservationist, is shooting them with contraceptive darts in a bid to control the number of foals born each year.
It might sound like a bizarre idea, but actually, perhaps it makes perfect sense. The current problem that the Dartmoor hill ponies – and their owners – face is one of overbreeding. While hill ponies are needed to keep the gorse and natural ecosystem of the moor under control, the natural result of mixing mares and stallions on the moorland is an excess of foals. In the current economic climate, these foals often sell for less than £10 a pony at the sales, and in 2010, it was revealed that slaughtered ponies were being sold to Dartmoor Zoo, where their flesh was used as tiger food.
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