Speaker: Suzanne Kempe

Many people visiting the New Forest or simply driving through on their commutes will probably just regard the ponies on the side of the road as a tourist attraction or as roadside lawn mowers. However they are much more important than you might think. This fully illustrated talk by Suzanne Kempe will guide you through some of the history of commoning and how it has shaped the landscape through the centuries. The New Forest pony is also one of our heritage native breeds and the foals bred on the forest can be found in later life as very successful competition or family ponies throughout the UK and overseas. This success is down to careful breeding programmes and management of the forestrun stock. The grazing habits of the ponies, cows, donkeys and pigs all play a role in providing perfect habitats for so many species of flora and fauna which are no longer found elsewhere, making the New Forest an important area for ecologists to visit from across the world.
Suzanne Kempe has lived in the New Forest for the last thirty years and is a practising commoner – i.e., she has the ‘right’ to turn ponies out onto the open forest. Suzanne breeds and produces New Forest ponies to a very high standard and is also a member of the New Forest Pony Judges panel. Suzanne has judged ponies in Finland and in Sweden as well as helped to run a small NF pony stud in Belgium.