The Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust (DPHT) is asking for donations to pay for a replacement donation box after one was broken into last week (January 5) and an estimated £350 stolen.

Workers discovered that the donation box inside a purpose-built cairn in the centre’s car park at Parke, Bovey Tracey had been jemmied open. The charity now faces the huge cost of dismantling the structure and replacing it with a new security money box.

Chief executive Dru Butterfield said: ‘This is the first time it’s happened and it’s really devastating. We need to put the word out to anybody that has got the skills to create a cairn because we’re going to have to dismantle the entire cairn.

‘We’re going to have to smash it apart, remove the money box and then it will have to be rebuilt with a new money box. We’ll have to get all new stone because we can’t use the existing stone because it will all have to be chipped and broken [to get the money box out]. We’re hopeful that someone might step forward and help us rebuild the cairn with a much sturdier version, but until it is built, we will continue losing funds.’

She added that the DPHT would consider emptying the box on a daily basis in the future.

The donation box, which has been on the site for about three years, helps fund is hay for the trust’s herd of semi-feral ponies and any visiting wild ponies. The trust will lose that source of revenue until the new cairn is built though visitors can still donate via a QR code on the gatepost.

Dru added: ‘This was done at a time which is probably one of our busiest periods, our key Christmas time when we would have raised a huge amount of money because people go there to walk the dogs and visit the cafe. We’ve lost a prime opportunity to raise donations.

‘We have got a Facebook post up and running and we’ve had some very supportive comments. I can only say a massive thank-you to our ongoing supporters.’

The trust’s centre is currently closed but it will reopen for the February half-term and be fully open for Easter by which time it hopes the new cairn and donation box will be up and running.’

Dru said she was also looking forward to welcoming back pupils from Bovey Tracey Primary School and Ivybridge and inviting new families to the centre this coming year.

The DPHT works to conserve the Dartmoor environment and the ponies that roam its moorland. Though many Dartmoor ponies are wild, the DPHT maintain a semi-tame herd for educational purposes and sometimes care for sick and injured wild ponies.

At the moment, the trust is caring for a couple of wild ponies suffering from equine respiratory disease, strangles, which will be released when they have made a full recovery.

Although not an inherently dangerous disease, strangles is highly infectious and affected horses must be kept isolated in order to prevent spreading the disease to more vulnerable horses. In February last year, the DPHT issued a warning about a particularly virulent form of the disease crossing the moor. The DPHT’s own herd contracted the disease in August but has now recovered. To donate towards the new cairn, visit the charity’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/DartmoorPony.