Originally posted by paulh Hmm...what does this mean?
Oh dear, this post might be upsetting, so before I start let me make it clear that I wish the commercial trade in Dartmoor ponies didn't exist. I wish that we still had herds of thousands of them left to roam free, as it was in the past. But the brutal realities of modern agriculture just don't allow for that anymore. Cattle and sheep farmers want the moorland grazing for their own more profitable livestock, so pony numbers are carefully controlled, and they would probably be gone altogether if it wasn't for their appeal to tourists.
So every autumn there is a roundup and count of the ponies, called the Drift, and most of them go off to market leaving just a breeding stock behind for the next year. The lucky ones become riding ponies for little kids, but sadly that's not very many nowadays. The tragic truth is that more than half the pony foals born each year end up as food for zoo animals. There is also a small trade in pony meat for human consumption, which is something that I don't think I could ever bring myself to try personally.
As you can imagine, the ponies stay well away from human beings up on the high moor for a while after the Drift, but they are always drawn back down again by the better grazing and the naughty snacks that they get from ignorant humans.
And as for me: I photograph the local herds each year as they grow, and by the end of the summer I feel like I know many of them as individuals, but as October approaches I know that they'll soon be gone. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is.