The Lake District's Herdwick sheep trade

The Herdwick is a traditional breed of domestic sheep native to the mountainous Lake District of Cumbria in north-west England Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

For the first time in six years, Herdwicks are in danger of slipping back to the position where their tough, grey, waterproof fleeces fetch only six to 10 pence each Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Neil Johnson, the National Trust's farming and community officer for the north-west, is concerned that the drop in price for Herdwick wool threatens the livelihood of the Lake District community Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

The threatened slump follows the closure of the National Trust's pioneering Herdwick project, which harnessed 56 tenant farms in the Lakes in 2003, to promote the unique wool for carpets Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Johnson says: "The Herdwick project wasn't a commercial success in the end, but it has raised the wool's profile. There are opportunities and there is interest" Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Herdwick farming was historically part-time work, because low lamb births and the Herdwicks' large bones make the meat income only a little less modest than the money earned by selling wool Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Wool from Herdwick sheep. Fleece burning – which was the fate of half of Cumbria's stock in 2002 and was done to avoid the cost of transport and market fees – died out when the price rose, but has returned again Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

The Trust has decided to deploy its huge resources to find new ways of sustaining the sheep trade. For example, farm tenants are deployed in repairing hundreds of miles of drystone walls in the Trust's grounds Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Johnson says: "The market forces against us have proved too great. The whole wool infrastructure in the UK was too depleted and so much carpet comes in from abroad using manmade fabrics." Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

"It is truly ironic in today's world, where we surround and clothe ourselves with products manmade from petrochemicals or intensive agriculture using pesticides, that a sustainable material, which has given us hundreds of years of warmth and comes from the backs of these sheep, has practically no commercial value. Isn't that crazy?" Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian