“Here’s how to save the Dartmoor ponies. Eat them.”

Michael Mosbacher, the Telegraph‘s Deputy Comment Editor, is going for the rage-clicks, but he has a point:

There are under 1,000 ponies left on Dartmoor and over 145,000 sheep. Since the 1950s, the moor’s pony population has fallen by close to 90 per cent, whilst ovine numbers have more than trebled. These divergent trajectories have much to do with one simple fact – lamb is a Sunday roast staple and we don’t eat ponies. Easter dining tables groan under legs of lamb, but pony tenderloins are only notable by their absence.

Overgrazing is the environmental sin du jour and the regulators are demanding that something be done. We indeed live on a sheep-sodden island. According to Defra figures, the ovine population of the UK was 30.5 million in June last year. Wales alone is home to over 8.5 million sheep whilst there are only around 5 million in the entire United States.

On Dartmoor, Natural England is calling for a radical reduction in stocking numbers, and that for the first time includes the semi-wild ponies. The problem for the ponies is that they are of very little commercial value and there is an abundant market for lamb. If a farmer is ordered to reduce their livestock numbers – the ponies are actually all owned – they will cull the ponies rather than have fewer of the animals from which they actually draw their living.