BY ALEXIA JAMES
A £550,000 Wake-Up Call on a Failed Crusade
The atmosphere at the Dartmoor Tors Festival in Ashburton this past Sunday was one of cautious optimism. On the panel discussing nature recovery on the moor sat people with genuine skin in the game: Richard Drysdale from the National Park, commoner and Dartmoor Commoners’ Council Chair Tracy May, and Tony Whitehead from the Dartmoor Nature Alliance. This was a conversation about building a future for one of Britain’s most iconic landscapes, chaired ably by author Sophie Pavelle.
Conspicuously absent were the architects of a year of acrimony, stress, and wasted donations: the political activist group Wild Justice.
In 2024, campaigners living on Dartmoor lobbied Wild Justice to bring the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council to the High Court to answer eight accusations concerning the way it administered the rules and regulations governing farming and grazing on the high moor. The eight grounds of challenge, citing breaches of duties under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 and other regulations, were as follows: failure to make regulations to prevent overstocking; failure to assess grazing numbers; failure to conserve and enhance natural beauty; breach of duties toward Sites of Special Scientific Interest; breach of conservation duties under the Habitat Regulations; operating outside the statutory purpose by failing to focus on landscape protection; bias and predetermination in decisions attempting to head off legal challenges; and unlawful abdication of duty regarding the decision not to reduce livestock numbers.
The result, delivered in March after hearings in August 2025, was a near-total collapse of the case. Mr Justice Mould dismissed seven of the eight grounds. Wild Justice succeeded on only one technical point: that the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council’s assessment of livestock numbers was not sufficiently detailed. This was not a ruling that the moor was overgrazed. It was a criticism of paperwork, a finding that the quality of the assessment fell short rather than a direct order to cut stock numbers. Not a single animal was ordered removed. For a group that positions itself as the sharp end of environmental enforcement, a single win on a procedural technicality against a body of commoners is a dismal return on a case that caused enormous damage to community relations.
The cruelty of this legal stunt extends beyond the courtroom outcome. It lies in the funding model. Wild Justice, a not-for-profit run by unpaid directors, relies heavily on aggressive crowdfunding to fuel its litigation. They have previously boasted of raising £48,500 in just three days for a badger cull challenge. The money donated by well-meaning supporters for the Dartmoor case went straight into the pockets of an expensive London legal team, which for this matter included a Partner at Leigh Day, a KC from Matrix Chambers, and a barrister from 39 Essex Chambers. This is not grassroots justice. It is a publicly-funded gravy train for the legal profession, bankrolled by donors who almost certainly did not expect their contributions to fund a seven-eighths defeat. The selective nature of Wild Justice’s outrage betrays a cynical operating model: target rural communities and traditional land management practices, whip up a fundraising bonanza, and move on to the next campaign regardless of the human cost left behind.
Contrast the courtroom drama with what was genuinely happening on the ground. Before Wild Justice even filed their claim, the government had commissioned David Fursdon, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Devon, to conduct an independent review addressing concerns regarding the grazing and environmental management of Dartmoor. Published in 2023, the Fursdon Review delivered a balanced assessment. It rapped the knuckles of Natural England for failing to communicate properly with the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council when enforcing ever-changing prescriptions on stock numbers. Crucially, it called for careful data collection, skilful management, and above all the building of genuine partnerships. It also stated plainly that it is not possible to turn the clock back to a past era and recreate what Dartmoor looked like then. Dartmoor faces specific threats and opportunities at this point in time, and addressing them requires collaboration, not confrontation.
The outcome of that review was the formation of the Dartmoor Land Use Management Group, a body established to advise and ensure that the problems of the past were put behind the moor. Tracy May, the current Chair of the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council, sits on that group. This is the embodiment of the genuine partnership prescribed by Fursdon: a table at which farmers, conservationists, and regulators work together on evidence-based land management without the shadow of legal thuggery hanging over them.
Sunday’s panel discussion focused on collaborative tools and the people who will actually deliver nature recovery on the ground. The absence of Wild Justice’s divisive approach from that conversation was telling. The group’s intervention on Dartmoor achieved little of substance: an 87.5 percent failure rate in court, hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations incinerated on silk-stocking lawyers in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and immense distress inflicted on farming families who are the actual custodians of this land. Dartmoor does not need a campaigning law firm in search of a client. It needs the genuine partnership that was in that room in Ashburton on Sunday. The commoners have a seat at the table. Wild Justice is left in the courtroom, counting its losses.