Exmoor ponies: the ancient moorland herds that survived the brink

High on the heather and gorse of south west England, where the wind rarely stops and the weather turns in minutes, a sturdy brown pony grazes as it has for thousands of years. The Exmoor pony is one of the oldest native breeds in Europe, a living link to the wild horses that once roamed these islands, and it remains one of the most quietly remarkable animals in the British countryside.

A native of the moor

The Exmoor pony takes its name from the high moorland of Exmoor, straddling the counties of Somerset and Devon, where free living herds still graze across open ground. Unlike ordinary riding ponies, these animals live outdoors all year round, forming small family groups that move together over the hills and find their own food and shelter without help from people.

Researchers believe the ancestors of the breed were present in the British Isles during the last Ice Age, which would make the Exmoor one of the most ancient pony types in Europe. Whether or not every detail of that long story can be proven, the pony has clearly been shaped over countless generations by the harsh, exposed landscape it calls home rather than by human fashion.

Built for the wild

Everything about the Exmoor pony speaks of survival. The animals are compact and powerfully built, always a shade of bay, brown or dun, with a pale oatmeal colouring around the muzzle and eyes that breeders call the mealy muzzle. This soft ring of lighter hair is considered a mark of the breed's primitive, wild origins and sets it apart from other moorland ponies.

To endure the freezing, soaking winters of the moor, the pony grows a remarkable double winter coat. A greasy outer layer sheds the rain while a dense woolly underlayer traps body heat, so that snow can settle on the pony's back without melting. Heavy brows and well protected eyes, sometimes called the toad eye, help shield the animal from driving wind and rain.

Brought to the edge

For all its toughness, the Exmoor pony came perilously close to vanishing. During the Second World War the moors were used for military training, and accounts from the period describe ponies being shot for target practice while some hungry people took animals for food. Fences and gates fell into disrepair and the scattered herds were left largely unwatched.

By the end of the war, conservationists estimate that no more than about fifty Exmoor ponies were left alive, and only a handful of those were breeding males. A breed that had survived for thousands of years suddenly stood within a whisker of extinction, its future resting on a tiny and fragile scattering of survivors on the hills.

The long road back

The recovery of the Exmoor pony is a story of stubborn local devotion. Exmoor breeders, among them the well remembered Mary Etherington, encouraged farmers to gather what animals remained and begin carefully breeding again. Cattle grids and repaired boundaries allowed ponies to be returned to the moor to graze, and slowly the numbers on the hills started to climb.

Today conservationists count roughly five hundred Exmoor ponies on the moor itself, with several thousand more spread across the rest of the country and beyond. Each autumn many of the free living herds are gathered in from the moor so that foals can be checked and registered, before the ponies are turned back out to spend the winter once more in the open.

Guardians of the landscape

The ponies are no longer valued only for their own sake, but for the work their grazing does. On nature reserves and rewilding sites across the country, Exmoor ponies are used for conservation grazing, cropping tough grasses and nibbling back invading scrub. In doing so they keep heaths, wetlands and meadows open, which in turn helps a whole community of plants, insects and birds to thrive.

This makes the breed something of a keystone in modern conservation. Where machines would be clumsy and expensive, a small herd of hardy ponies can maintain a delicate mosaic of habitats almost for free, mimicking the grazing of the wild herbivores that once shaped these landscapes long before farming arrived.

A future still in the balance

Despite its comeback, the Exmoor pony is not out of danger. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust still lists it as an endangered native breed, largely because the whole living population descends from that tiny post war remnant, leaving the gene pool narrow. Scientists are now studying the ponies' genetics closely to help guide careful, sustainable breeding.

For the people who walk the moor on a cold, bright morning and meet a herd grazing quietly among the heather, the Exmoor pony is far more than a rare breed statistic. It is a piece of living heritage, a hardy survivor that carries the deep past of these hills on its back and, with continued care, may carry it far into the future as well.