The Duchy has decided that farming must work with \u201cnature\u201d<\/a>: tree planting, biodiversity and the revival of peat bogs will take precedence, and farmers will be incentivised through subsidies and grants to fall in line.<\/p>\nNot every farmer will be on board, but plenty are doing their bit to bring back species including the marsh fritillary butterfly on their land already, and environmentalists are thrilled.<\/p>\n
The Duchy is \u201cbeing quite brave about it\u201d says Tony Whitehead from the Dartmoor Nature Alliance, and \u201cmuch more ambitious\u201d with specific plans to plant trees. \u201cWhat a thing to pass down to William\u2019s children one day,\u201d he says as he takes me on a walk to Wistman\u2019s Wood, William\u2019s precious and now expanding ancient oak woodland a couple of miles outside the village. \u201cWhat a legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dartmoor is one of five new \u201cheartlands\u201d identified by the Duchy \u2013 Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, Bath and Kennington in south London are the others \u2013 with other parts of the old estate soon to be sold off to focus money and attention where staff think they can make the most difference. Twenty per cent of land in non-key areas such as Hertfordshire and Devon will be sold, raising an estimated \u00a3500m to be redeployed on projects closer to William\u2019s heart, including homelessness.<\/p>\n
It has left the Prince of Wales \u2013 unusually for one of the most popular members of the Royal family \u2013 in the role of \u201cbad cop\u201d on some fronts. Farmers in Bradninch, Devon, have spoken of being \u201cfurious\u201d, \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201coutraged\u201d at plans to sell their farms, while the Duchy\u2019s more positive spin is that many tenants find the prospect of buying their farms \u201cgenuinely exciting\u201d, promising to support them \u201cthrough this process with care and respect\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Dartmoor, where newcomers are called \u201cblow-ins\u201d and no one is worth speaking to until they have spent at least three winters there, they are trying to weave very different strands of what is described to me semi-seriously as a \u201cmicro-nation\u201d: vastly different terrain, interests and problems, and a vocal community.<\/p>\n
Prince William is open to hearing from those with other views, such as commercial farmers who need to graze livestock in numbers to make a living (\u201cDon\u2019t be polite because I\u2019m in the room,\u201d I have heard him say), but has his own views which, ultimately, form the basis of the Duchy\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
He wants nature-forward goals, such as peat bogs being restored and the return of endangered species, and a financially secure future for the heart of the village that carries his name. These aims are not, the Duchy believes, mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A significant portion of the Duchy tenants praise a new level of communication and response from the estate. \u201cWe\u2019ve made a start,\u201d says Bax. \u201cWe know it hasn\u2019t always been the case. We want to lean into the community and be more active than we were in the past.\u201d The Dartmoor project is complicated. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2476855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[386947,308707,433747,21738,387181,23068,305239,22769,344742,441762,24515,345946,382398],"class_list":["post-2476854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-dartmoor","tag-devon","tag-hannah-furness","tag-news","tag-other-features","tag-prince-william","tag-prisons","tag-royal-family","tag-standard","tag-telegraph-long-reads","tag-the-royal-family","tag-top-story","tag-us-content"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Can-Prince-William-revive-Princetown-the-British-village-with-a.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476856,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476854\/revisions\/2476856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2476855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}