Silviculture and Grazing in the New Forest: Rival Land Uses Over Nine Centuries

Abstract

he Crown's deer versus commoners' livestock. Commoners' livestock versus the Crown's trees. The Crown's trees versus commoners' livestock versus weekend campers. Over the centuries a spirited tug of war has persisted in England's New Forest. The basic, complex question continues: how is the land to be used? This study focuses primarily on the changing characteristics and purposes of silviculture and grazing. It also discusses the interaction and traditional friction between them, and a new friction with the growing demands of yet another form of land use, recreation. The study examines the ancient right of common of pasture as it impinges upon processes and requirements of silviculture in the New Forest and is in turn pressured by these silvicultural demands. Grazing of domestic animals has been a significant use of the New Forest throughout its history, and since the fifteenth century efforts to conserve and propagate timber have competed with it. By some standards the New Forest of England is neither new nor a forest. Its nine hundredth anniversary was observed in 1979, and hardly half of its 144 square miles is actually occupied by trees.' Nevertheless, the New Forest was indeed "new" relative to existing forests when it was established and named in or about A.D. 1079; and "forest" was then neither a botanical nor geographical but a legal term. It implied an area not covered by Common Law but subject instead to special Forest Law-an area where the deer were safeguarded for the king's hunting and as a reservoir for meat and hides.2 Typical of medieval forests, this New Forest was a mix of woods and thickets and open land. As today, so also then, "divers men have land within it, and yet the same Territory itself doth lie open and not inclosed, although perhaps there