Grazing Animal project – PONT

Thanks to Isabel for the following information, and also via her some great pictures to accompany the post, (forwarded by Gwyn Jones, of the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism) and taken by Sidsel Christoffersen of Norway, a couple of years ago.

They demonstrate some of the traditional Norwegian skills, and dress, involved in manual hay making, at an annual hay making/meadow management course held every July for the last 23 years at Ryghsetra. It seems the Norwegians are a little ahead of us here in Carmarthenshire, in valuing and promoting traditional meadow management, and wild flower meadows! 

PONT (Pori, Natur a Threftadaeth – Grazing, Nature and Heritage) is a not-for-profit organisation which exists to encourage and facilitate grazing for the benefit of the wildlife, landscape and cultural heritage of Wales. It works on a landscape scale, with landowners and communities. It aims to set up local grazing schemes. PONT was set up over 8 years ago and, after a 2 year lull in activities, PONT has recently been rejuvenated.

Please find below their draft bilingual information sheets about the organisation. Hopefully clicking on these should open them…I haven’t tried including a pdf format before in a blog post, so fingers crossed that they will work.

PONT leaflet – Final – English.

PONT leaflet – Final – WELSH

Hopefully these will give you some idea of what PONT is all about and how they are trying to promote environmentally sustainable grazing practices that deliver multiple benefits for wildlife and people. 

There are now two officers covering north and south Carmarthenshire and they are interested to see how they can work with members of the CMG who may be interested in a grazing animal project. 

PONT would be interested in meeting people involved in the Meadows Group to discuss the issues/needs of community-supported grazing in Carmarthenshire and how PONT might be able to help.  If you would like to do this, then please contact Steven Warnock of PONT (Tel: 07421 994862; swarnock@pontcymru.org) and a meeting could be arranged if there is enough interest. Please forward to anyone else that you think may be interested.

Also a request for any Welsh speaking meadow owners reading this to consider getting in touch, since Isabel and I have had an approach from a researcher for S4C, who is looking for suitable people to help with creating a new TV series this summer including features on meadows and gardens. If you’re interested, please send me or Isabel an email, and we can pass on the researcher’s contact details.

Thanks for reading.