Wood pasture is a historical European land management system in which open woodland provided shelter and forage for grazing animals, particularly sheep and cattle, as well as woodland products such as timber for construction and fuel, coppiced stems for wattle and charcoal making and pollarded poles. Evidence of old wood pasture management systems can be detected in many of the ancient woodlands of the UK.

How much is there?

This habitat often merges into the surrounding countryside, but recent estimates indicate that there is at least 60, 000 ha in England, leaving aside the New Forest which is a significant active wood-pasture landscape in north-west Europe.

Where are they?

Wood-pasture and parkland occurs throughout England from the lowlands of the south-east to the uplands of the north-west. Their origins lie in royal hunting forests, medieval deer parks and grazed common land; sometimes their remnants have been incorporated into more recent designed landscapes associated with some of our well known historic houses such as Chatsworth in Derbyshire.

Some of the better known sites which support this habitat include the New Forest, Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire, Calke Park in Derbyshire, Moccas Park in Herefordshire, Richmond Park in London and Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire.

Why do they matter?

The large numbers of big, old trees are important in their own right, but they also support a wide range of bat and bird species including woodpeckers, flycatchers and redstarts and other hole-nesting species. More particularly they are the stronghold for many rare species of lichen, fungi and invertebrates. Invertebrates such as the violet click beetle and the noble chafer beetle and fungi such as chicken in the woods and the oak polypore depend on the very specific conditions created by the dead and decaying wood found inside rotting trees, while lichen species such as Lobaria virens and Cresponea premnea may be found on the bark of old trees.

The distribution and abundance of wood-pasture and parkland, and related habitats such as hedges and in-field trees, help define local landscape character from the areas of big, old oak trees in Windsor Great Park to more intimate landscapes such as at Ebernoe Common in Sussex.

The presence of veteran trees in open habitats means that animals can graze on the same piece of land as timber is grown for fuel and building materials. Trees in these situations were pollarded, that is branches were cut above the height that browsing animals can reach. We know which trees were pollarded in the past because they now have a very distinctive growth form, but these traditional management practices often have not been practised for decades.

Issues for the future?

Threats to this habitat include the general problem of management neglect, in particular a decline in the practice of pollarding. Many of the key species associated with old trees depend on the presence of rotting wood that can only be found in trees of a certain age or condition, and usually in relatively open situations. The loss of trees which provide these conditions means it is increasingly important that replacement trees are coming along. Trees planted now will take centuries to reach the right stage, so the big, old trees need to be managed in a way which prolongs their life span, for example by judicious pruning and tree surgery.

The loss of grazing animals from some sites means that scrub is invading and the characteristic open nature of the habitat is being lost. Some of the habitat has also been lost of conifer planting during the first half of the twentieth century.