Lyn Friel with one of her rescued ponies
One of the rescued ponies on Cavehill
AS FIRST REVEALED IN THE SUNDAY WORLD: An animal rights activist says she’s been left ‘saddled’ with a bill of over £50,000 to foot after rescuing 15 ponies from Cavehill.
Lyn Friel, who runs Crosskennan Lane Animal Sanctuary in Co Antrim says that Belfast City Council promised her they would foot the bill for the operation.
She now claims: “Since being given a first payment of £6,000 by the council, we haven’t received another penny for the eight month operation in which 15 ponies were rescued.
“We had to hire a tractor just to get to the stranded ponies during the heavy snowfall in March,” said Lyn.
“We really struggled to get feed to the ponies so that they didn’t starve. They’d never been handled before so it was very hard to rescue them as they would simply run away. We had to gain their trust first.”
She said: “As far as we were concerned if there are ponies on your land, you are responsible for them, and these ponies were on Belfast City Council land.
The council asked us to deal with them.”
During the worst of the snow, a team of volunteers had to trek across huge snow drifts in perilous conditions in order to get vital feed to the ponies so they wouldn’t starve.
A rescued pony at Crosskennan Lane Animal Sanctuary
Lyn explained: “Once we had gained the trust of the ponies over the course of the eight month period we were able to get head collars on them.
“From there we were able rescue them and bring them back to our animal sanctuary at Crosskennan Lane and other land that we keep animals on.”
“After the snow we then had the hot summer to deal with. We were up there seven days and nights a week for most of 2013.
“I think the problem of the ponies at Cavehill came to a head when they began forcing walkers and hikers to jump out of the way.
“They were basically running wild, so the amount of complaints might have prompted the council to do something about it.”
The Sunday World contacted Belfast City Council this week but a Belfast City Council spokesman only said: “Our Legal Services department are currently investigating this matter.”
Crosskennan Lane Animal Sanctuary, which has just recently had a new educational log cabin schoolroom and paddock built for school kids courtesy of a grant from the charity GROW, also houses Shetland ponies, dogs and cats – with everyone working there a volunteer.
“The new cabin is a great addition to the sanctuary,” said Lyn, “but every penny we raise ourselves goes directly to the animals we look after here.”
Lyn is hoping that the ponies she and the volunteers at Crosskennan Lane have rescued can be integrated in some way into their new educational programmes at the facility.
Of the 15 ponies rescued from Cavehill one of the mares was in foal and had already given birth during the worst of last year’s snow.
All of the ponies had been abandoned and left to go feral on nearby land before they reached a fence and made their way into Cavehill Country Park.
Lyn said: “People had been going to Cavehill to feed the ponies and give them treats like apples, but the ponies began to get greedy, as animals do, and were getting aggressive with people when they came with food.”
Lyn also made a plea for donations to the animal sanctuary and for anyone who can rehome a horse or has an empty stable to contact the charity on 02894 46 5384.