NATIONAL Park chiefs say they have battled back from the foot-and-mouth disease crisis to restore dozens of historic barns and walls.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is on track to give grant aid to 19 barn conservation projects and rebuild more than five kilometres of stone walls by the end of March.

Barns and walls officer Paul Collins said: "The traditional stone barns and walls of the Yorkshire Dales are one of the most distinctive landscape features of the national park.

"Despite the setback that our conservation programme has suffered because of foot-and-mouth disease and the obvious restrictions, local contractors have now been able to start work at a number of sites and we look on track for the end of the financial year.

"Over recent years, we have been able to draw in money from a number of sources to safeguard the barns and walls of the national park and, with grants in the pipeline from the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, even more of these important landscape features will be conserved next year."