DOG walkers in Laverstock say they have been left with nowhere to exercise their pets after a field they have walked through for decades was fenced off for a conservation project.

The field, just off Pilgrims Way, is being rented by the River Bourne Community Farm to be developed into a wildlife haven and meadowland, as reported in last week’s Journal. Natural England is helping the farm with the development through funding and advice.

Dog walkers – a group of whom are pictured – are now restricted to a permissive pathway down one edge of the field, leading to the Laverstock Downs, after the farm said that a handful of walkers ignored signs to stick to the pathway or keep animals on leads.

Mandi Pettefar, who moved to Laverstock 14 years ago, said: “While we have previously enjoyed being adjacent to countryside, we now have electric fences, restrictions to our freedom and barbed wire to contend with.

“This is not for the community; this is for the farm to raise money to serve itself.”

Miss Pettefar’s mother, Val, questioned why the field was ploughed if the intention is to protect and encourage ground-nesting birds.

“It’s just ludicrous, the whole situation,”

she said. “We feel like prisoners and we are the ones that live here.”

The dog walkers say that before the field was fenced off they would often see deer in there, but that none have been seen since.

They also said that it is increasingly difficult to walk on the Downs as there are cattle grazing and the ground has been “churned up” and been made slippery by work carried out by the farm.

“Where do they expect us to walk our dogs?” said Graham Spittle.

“It’s such a mess up there now that we can’t walk up on the Downs at all.

They have taken our public paths and walkways.”

Jane Wilkinson, farm office manager, said that the £100,000 it has received in funding from Natural England was not given in cash to develop the field, rather as separate amounts of funding applied for over a two-year period to build farm facilities, including a straw bale classroom, compost toilets and pathways around the farm.

“We would have developed the field with or without the capital works funding for the farm,” she said.

She added that there has never been permission from the landowner for people to walk in the field, apart from along the permissive path.

She added that a small section of path was levelled near the Downs to make it safer to walk on and as wide as possible, and that after it rained, signs were posted to apologise for the mud.

“We have no interest in making anything dangerous for anybody,” she said.