Sunday’s episode of Countryfile on BBC One will feature an investigation into the levels of abandoned and neglected horses in the UK.
The situation, which the RSPCA has described as a crisis involving ‘thousands of horses’, sees horses either illegally left on land by owners with no pasture of their own – or abandoned outright by owners who no longer wish to care for them. Both practices are widely seen by animal health experts to lead to neglect, physical harm, and in the worst case death, whilst also posing a risk to the public.
Presenter Tom Heap accompanies Animal Welfare Inspector Steve Gale on duty in Stockton-On-Tees where they discover over half a dozen horses wandering freely through a housing estate. They later encounter an illegally tethered – or ‘fly grazing’ – horse who has worn a perfect circle into the ground after grazing on all the grass the rope allows it to reach.
Tom looks into how The Control of Horses Act, which came into force last summer and offers hope to the crisis, allows landowners to instantly seize horses found illegally grazing on their land. He meets a team of ‘equine bailiffs’ who are seen in exclusive night-vision footage seizing a fly grazing horse under the cover of darkness as to avoid repercussions from its owners.
The episode also features interviews with a number of the horse owners who illegally graze their animals on land they do not own. One is seen telling Tom he ‘doesn’t see the harm’ in the practice, whilst another - disguised with a mask and brandishing a mallet - tells Tom of his anger that his horses have previously been seized by bailiffs.
Later in the episode Tom meets a horse named Huckleberry. In upsetting scenes, Huckleberry’s rescuer Jacko Jackson tells Countryfile how Huckleberry was found abandoned with another horse. “By the time we got to them the friend was dead. It was just bones and lots of maggots…having seen the dead one we were going to move heaven and earth to get [Huckleberry] out of there. He needed to live, and live like a proper equine.” A healthy Huckleberry is shown in his new home – World Horse Welfare Centre in Norwich - playing happily with another horse.
Elsewhere in the episode, Tom learns how people are often scared to report abandoned horses for fear that it will lead to the horses being put down. He also discovers how the large costs involved lead to some local councils not using their new-found powers and instead turning a blind eye to horses abandoned in their catchment authority.
