The Central Dartmoor Farm Cluster (Community Interest Company) evolved as an output of the Dartmoor Facilitation Fund from those farmers who were most engaged in the ‘All the Moor’s Butterfly’ project that ran a few years ago. This project provided us with advice and training on how we could better manage our areas of boggy rhos pastures to benefit the rare Marsh Fritillary butterfly. The Marsh Fritillary (like many rare species) is quite a fussy creature. Its caterpillars feed almost exclusively on Devil’s Bit Scabious, which in turn requires the rhos pasture to be grazed by the right numbers and at the right time generally by cattle and / or ponies to suppress competing vegetation such as Molinia (purple moor grass) and to create a mosaic of different vegetation heights and densities. With annual monitoring of our butterfly populations, we’ve got quite competitive about who has got the most, with definite bragging rights for the farm who wins our butterfly cup each year.  

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This was followed by encouragement and support from the Dartmoor Hill Farm project to come together as a group, along with really helpful advice from them and others on how we could further enhance our other wildlife habitats. Additionally, they provided guidance on how, by working together over a landscape scale, we can achieve larger changes than if we were working alone – after all wildlife needs to be able to move between farms and so we’re working to provide interconnected habitats.

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If you would like to get in touch, please email: secretary@dartmoorfarmcluster.uk