{"id":716883,"date":"2026-07-29T07:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/716883\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:50:10","slug":"new-forest-pony-drift-cancelled-after-flu-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/716883\/","title":{"rendered":"New Forest pony drift cancelled after flu outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The traditional rounding up of ponies in the New Forest has been cancelled after an <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2026\/07\/02\/new-forest-ponies-die-in-equine-flu-outbreak\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">outbreak of equine flu<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The drifts in August have been cancelled after the rare, highly contagious flu spread in the <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/new-forest\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Forest National Park<\/a>, Hampshire, for the first time in 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>It is believed that around 35 free-roaming ponies have died from the virus so far, out of an estimated 5,000 grazing in the national park at any given time.<\/p>\n<p>Between August and November every year, <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2023\/04\/12\/new-forest-visitors-fined-up-to-1000-if-they-pet-ponies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Forest ponies<\/a> are rounded up in drifts to gallop through the national park toward holding pens to have their health checked and for new foals to be branded.<\/p>\n<p>Verderers of the New Forest, the governing body that protects traditional rights around agriculture in the area, have cancelled the drifts and put later round-ups under review.<\/p>\n<p>They say official veterinary advice is to leave the affected ponies where they are to avoid causing them unnecessary stress and potentially spreading the virus further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The traditional rounding up of ponies in the New Forest has been cancelled after an outbreak of equine&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2851,59,13759,102,73274,50,5438,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-716883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-animals","tag-gb","tag-hampshire","tag-health","tag-new-forest","tag-news","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}