Dartmoor National Park Authority

Management Agreements

Dartmoor National Park Authority has its own local agreements with farmers to farm in an environmentally sensitive way. Fears about moorland being ploughed up during the 1970s, when grants were available to agriculturally improve the land, lead to National Park Authorities being given the power to enter into agreements with farmers which paid compensation to farmers on a profits foregone basis for not improving the land.

The real threat of moorland and semi-natural vegetation being agriculturally improved diminished when improvement grants ended. In their place more positive agreements were made where farmers were paid to farm in an environmentally sensitive way. Many of these areas were places where the public had been walking, but where there was no legal right of access. Therefore, many National Park Authority agreements made not only had a management element but include an agreement to give the public a formal right of access. This meant that for many years Dartmoor had unparalleled access opportunities over most of its moorland. For more information on access opportunities follow the link to Enjoying Dartmoor: Access to the Countryside.

Schemes that paid farmers to farm in an environmentally friendly way were originally taken up nationally by the (then) Countryside Commission and then by Defra with the introduction of Countryside Stewardship scheme. Agri-environment schemes, as they are known, are now the norm throughout England. This has meant that Dartmoor National Park Authority has reduced the number of active agreements as farmers opt to go into the existing National Schemes. Run by the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) these national schemes have much larger budgets and can therefore offer a wider range of options for farmers.  

Page updated 21 August 2009