Regarding George Monbiot’s article (There’s an invader turning huge swathes of Britain into deserts – and these dead zones are spreading, 9 June), yes, molinia (purple moor-grass) is a serious scourge of many of the UK’s acidic upland landscapes. In 1999, while still residing in my home county of East Sussex, I began a conservation grazing initiative using Exmoor ponies to combat the growing threat to the South Downs’ chalk grasslands from a very similar grass, Brachypodium (tor grass), which back then I estimated was affecting well in excess of 200 hectares. This grass is of little use to farmers and also seriously depletes biodiversity.
In 2004, we began to get increasingly involved with the extensive acid grasslands in the high, acid heath and grasslands of the Ashdown Forest area, involving four different landowners – Sussex Wildlife Trust, Sussex Police Authority, the Ministry of Defence and the Conservators of Ashdown. Here, pony grazing was mainly to combat the rampant spread of molinia. The most spectacular result was on the MoD’s 200-hectare training area, which had not been grazed within living memory. This was transformed from mainly thick molinia to open swards within several years of grazing 32 Exmoors year-round. It also minimised the previous extensive fires caused by army pyrotechnics.
