Lakeland rare breed faces extinction: The fells National Trust calls for swift slaughter of infected herd

The director of the National Trust yesterday called for the swift slaughter of a flock of Herdwick sheep infected with foot and mouth on one of its farms in remote hill country in the Lake District. "We have 12,000 Herdwick sheep but that should increase to more than 2,000 after lambing,"...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Guardian (London)
Main Author David Ward, Angelique Chrisafis and Liz Nightingale
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 27.03.2001
Subjects
Animal euthanasia
Endangered & extinct species
Foot & mouth disease
Reynolds, Fiona
Sheep
Lake District England
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Summary:The director of the National Trust yesterday called for the swift slaughter of a flock of Herdwick sheep infected with foot and mouth on one of its farms in remote hill country in the Lake District. "We have 12,000 Herdwick sheep but that should increase to more than 2,000 after lambing," said Hazel Relph, who with her husband, Joe, farms at Rosthwaite in Borrowdale. Herdwicks may have come to Britain from Norway or even from shipwrecked galleons of the Spanish Armada. They were threatened with extinction in the 1920s -Beatrix Potter helped save them when farmers were breeding other, more productive sheep. She bought a 19,000-acre sheep farm near the Kirkstone Pass in 1923 and after her death in 1942, she left her land to the National Trust, which now owns most fell farms in the Lake District.
ISSN:0261-3077