Burrator Forest Tests New Ways to Protect Young Trees

If you think woodland management is mostly about planting trees and then stepping back, Burrator Forest offers a useful correction. According to the government case study, this 353-hectare site beside Burrator Reservoir, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park in Devon, is a shared space with a lot going on at once. It contains a mix of woodland habitats, supports native and non-native species, and also has to work for farming, recreation and long-term forestry. Owned by South West Water and managed by South West Lakes Trust, Burrator is part of a wider group of more than 50 managed sites across south-west England, many of them with woodland. That wider setting matters. What is happening here is not a quirky local problem. It is a clear example of the kind of pressures that appear when public access, livestock and conservation all meet in one place.

One of the biggest challenges starts with access. Local people have common land rights to graze animals on the moor, and there are no fences separating that land from areas managed by South West Lakes Trust. Livestock from nearby farms can also wander in. When visitors leave gates open, or when fencing is damaged or cut, cattle and ponies can move into the forest with very little effort. **What this means:** protecting woodland is not only about what grows inside it. It is also about where gates sit, how easy they are to use and whether people feel the access route matches where they actually want to go. The case study notes that accessible gates and stiles are available, but not always in the places people expect. If you use paths through places like this, the lesson is simple: shutting a gate can protect far more than a boundary line.

The cost of getting this wrong is real. South West Lakes Trust says Burrator Forest lost around £5,500 worth of conifer trees to livestock grazing during an 18-month period between 2024 and 2025. Young trees can be browsed, trampled or stripped back before they are properly established, which means a planting job can quickly become a replacement job. In the original account, Nicola explained that the trees had been planted without guards because the Trust does not use tree guards unless it really has to. She also described spending many hours trying to get ponies out of the woodland, especially when thick vegetation inside the fence line makes the job harder. That detail matters because it shows woodland management as it really is: not a neat plan on paper, but repeated, hands-on work on the ground.

The first response has been practical rather than flashy. South West Lakes Trust has started fitting self-closing mechanisms to existing gates at Burrator Forest and plans to carry on using them. Volunteers now patrol the fence lines and carry out regular audits to help keep the woodland protected. That may sound like basic maintenance, but the numbers show why it matters. Across the Trust's estate, annual fencing maintenance costs run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. **Why that matters:** the bill is not just the price of wire, posts and repairs. It is also the value of damaged trees, the staff time spent retrieving animals and the constant effort needed to keep a site both protected and open to the public.

Some of the most interesting work is happening without a physical fence at all. Through the Water Industry National Environment Programme, South West Water has been working with tenant farmers to trial Nofence collars, which use GPS to manage cattle movement through virtual fencing. The first 50 collars were fitted to cattle in 2024 without reported problems, and another 50 were bought the following year. If you have not come across virtual fencing before, think of it as an invisible boundary linked to a collar rather than a wire stretched across the ground. The data from those collars is now being analysed to show where cattle prefer to graze and when they are most active. That should help the Trust protect smaller, sensitive areas around trees and other vulnerable spots. In plain English, the idea is to fence the trees in rather than fence the cattle out.

Livestock are only part of the story. South West Lakes Trust also works with Artemis Land Management Services to survey deer and grey squirrels and to carry out control measures where needed. According to the case study, Artemis keeps a regular presence on the ground to deter browsing animals, installs extra fencing and uses selective culling when necessary. Grey squirrels create a different sort of damage because bark stripping lowers the value of commercial timber. Management plans are still being developed with Artemis, British Red Squirrel and other local conservation groups. For readers, this is a good reminder that woodland care often depends on partnerships. One organisation may own a site, but it still needs specialist knowledge, trained staff and local cooperation to keep that site healthy.

The Trust is also testing simpler, lower-tech ideas. One trial will use sheep's fleece mulch mats around the base of individual trees to discourage deer and smaller mammals such as voles. Drawing on her experience on sheep farms, Nicola said raw fleece around trees can work well, although fleece or other animal by-products used away from the farm have to be treated and licensed first. There is another useful observation here. The Trust has noticed that heavier footfall in some areas can keep deer away, and that sheep grazing in nearby fields appears to reduce the damage deer cause in surrounding woodland. That does not mean more people automatically makes conservation easier. It does mean animal behaviour changes depending on what else is happening nearby, which is why local evidence matters so much.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the story is the beaver. At other South West Lakes Trust sites, Eurasian beavers have proved to be helpful rather than harmful. Their browsing controls willow growth in woodland, cutting the need for expensive thinning, and the changes they make around reservoirs can also improve conditions for angling by stopping vegetation from becoming too thick for casting. Beavers often prompt concern in public debate, but the Trust says their effect at its sites has so far been overwhelmingly positive. Nicola's closing point in the original case study is worth holding on to: woodland managers need to keep their eyes open, expect the unexpected and act on evidence gathered from real work on the ground. We can read Burrator Forest as a simple lesson in good environmental management. There is rarely one perfect fix. More often, progress comes from close observation, steady maintenance and the confidence to change approach when the facts tell you to.