News

NORTH YORK MOORS FMD THREAT

9th April 2001

MOORLAND ASSOCIATION REPEATS CALL FOR VACCINATION


The news of a confirmed Foot and Mouth case at the very gateway to the North York Moors at Whitby has prompted renewed calls for vaccination against the disease from local landowners and farmers anxious to protect upland important and rare sheep flocks.

Last Thursday, The Moorland Association, which represents the owners of over three quarters of a million acres of England’s upland areas, announced that a large-scale ‘ring fence’ vaccination programme to prevent Foot and Mouth spreading would be the only way to protect the future of the uplands. It recommended that animals be vaccinated as a matter of urgency, along with a massively accelerated cull and disposal of infected livestock, in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease into the ecologically sensitive Pennine uplands and North York Moors. The call was backed by a number of other leading environment bodies, including the National Trust.

George Winn-Darley, Moorland Association Committee Member for the North York Moors said, “ With the confirmed case of Foot and Mouth at Ashes Farm, Ruswarp and a suspected case on the Egton Estate there is a very real and imminent danger that the disease will take a hold on the moors. There are, at the moment, about 50,000 ewes and hoggs grazing some 110,000 acres of open moorland and, if the current policy of culling sheep on neighbouring farms to confirmed cases is enforced, we could be looking at the wholesale slaughter of sheep from Fylingdales to Helmsley.”

The main sheep breed on the North York Moors is Swaledale with one flock of the rare Rough Fell and a handful of the threatened Cumbrian Herdwick sheep. If the “hefted” hill flocks were lost, there would be real problems of ‘hefting’ and acclimatising new sheep to the area in terms of shepherding.

The devastation caused by a mass cull may threaten the grazing pattern that has helped to form and maintain this unique bit of countryside which forms a National Park, is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area and is a candidate for designation as a Special Area for Conservation