THE team at Tamar Valley Donkey Park is appealing for information on a mindless act of vandalism on the park last Wednesday.

At some time between 4pm on Wednesday, March 2 and 8.30am the following morning, the wooded area at the bottom of the donkey park site was vandalised. Two windows of the duck house were smashed and an interior door was ripped off its hinges. A wire mesh around the outside of the duck run was torn and staff at the park believe vandals were in with the pigs, with a fence pulled down and sticks and stones in their enclosure.

Tamsin Coggon is one of the owners of the donkey park and has been running it for 17 years. In her time she said this was the first act of vandalism at the park.

She said: ’We’ve never had any need to check the bottom of the park at night before, The odd time we’ve had kids in the wood making dens, but something like that we don’t mind at all.

’There is just absolutely no need for it. Thankfully the animals are all absolutely fine now, though they weren’t quite themselves the day after it happened. We haven’t got a clue how much it will cost. We’ve managed to patch things up, using baler twine to put the wire fence back up and we’ve propped up the fence posts around the pig pen.

’More than anything when I found it, the mindlessness of it on top of a hard winter made it so frustrating. Everyone knows how wet it has been, and winter is the hardest time of year for us anyway with less visitors, so it is always a struggle this time of year and to have this on top of everything else, when we’ve got so much work to do before we open every day in two to three weeks, is really hard.’

After discovering the vandalism, Tamsin posted some photos of the damage on the park’s Facebook page. The pictures led to a big response and many people have donated money to the park to help fund repairs.

Tamsin said: ’The reason I put the pictures on Facebook was to say that in the 27 years the park has been here, and the 17 years I’ve been here, we have never had anything like this. The response from people has been great and unexpected, their donations mean we can afford to do the repairs without having to take money out of our other budgets, which are set out for the whole year.’

If you have any information on the crimes, call the police on 101. If you would like to support the donkey park, visit www.totalgiving.co.uk/charity/tamar-donkey-sanctuary