This is a collaborative application submitted by the Okehampton Commoners Association for the purchase of essential wildfire mitigation equipment. The aim is to improve their ability to appropriately respond, mitigate and manage wildfires on Okehampton Common. The purchase of firefighting equipment will strengthen local wildfire response capacity. This equipment will be used by commoners, who are often the first responders to wildfires, working in close coordination with the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.

This project aims to design and produce a Sea Wool Rock Bag prototype, which will be created using fully biodegradable Dartmoor Whiteface Sheep’s wool. Currently, plastic-covered rock bags are widely used to weigh down and embed wind turbines to protect subsea cables at sea on wind farms globally. This project focusses the production stage of this long-term project, working alongside Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to produce and test a new, innovative, sustainable wool net that will not only create an alternative product for subsea operations, but will also provide more of a route to market for our Dartmoor farmers’ wool.