Birch felling, track repairs and bridge battle among key issues on open Forest

This is a report on Open Forest management, by New Forest CDA vice chair Robert Stride. It was first published in the CDA’s annual report for 2025.

CDA committee members Robert Stride, Keith Mansbridge and Brian Ingram attend the Open Forest Advisory Committee (OFAC) on behalf of the CDA and its members. OFAC discusses all of the major works on the open Forest which may or may not impact on our commoning activities.

A wide variety of works have been carried out in the last 12 months which benefit commoning and commoners. These include track and passageway repairs, wind blown trees across tracks, birch felling and vegetation management with the tractor mounted mulchers, which makes short work of even the oldest gorse.

Unfortunately, last season because of the wet winter and early spring, we were unable to get much of the burning programme done. The perennial question, ‘is the weather good enough to go burning?’, was upon us this year and we were out this spring on every day that allowed.

Contrary to many commoners’ beliefs, it isn’t really possible to burn before February. We are lucky that the burning teams are made up mostly of commoners who work as employees or contractors for FE, which gives us an added impetus to get the burning right.

One of the challenges we have faced this year have been the ongoing problems at Pennymoor which will need remedying this summer. The bridge has been removed and the passageway is non existent.

The CDA and Verderers representatives have insisted that a robust passageway needs to be constructed which is passable year-round for commoners and their livestock.

We have also had site meetings at Anderwood and Millyford Green. At Anderwood, we agreed to clearing more of the trees off the wet lawn and to rerouting the drain out of the inclosure through a piece of low lawn and back in to the culvert under the road.

The Millyford Green project was rejected as it was decided it would be detrimental to the existing remnants of lawn which would be permanently ‘rewetted’ by infilling the drain.

Bridges are a vital part of getting around the open Forest and this year we have had quite a battle to ensure critical bridges are retained. After quite a few meetings with the FE civil engineering team we have come to an agreement.

The bridges will be maintained to the current standards. However, as they do not come up to the standards required for horse riding bridges (high sides etc), it will be left to commoners and other horse riders to make their own risk assessment before using the bridges and to understand that they use the bridges at their own risk.

My greatest sadness is that there is not a system or funding in place to train the next generation of Forest workers, or the opportunity for them to gain experience working in the Forest. The current team were lucky enough to have been trained by previous generations of skilled craftsmen, which is critical as this is such a unique place and skills cannot be learnt in college or on a modern training course.

The CDA team are responsible for suggesting cut and burn sites to OFAC and for reporting any problems or issues to FE. Please get in touch if there are aspects of open Forest management that you feel should be addressed, or areas you feel would be good to add to the cut and burn programme.

Robert Stride