Letters: Cattle commoning in New Forest – essential or environmental hazard?

SIR – Lyndsey Stride is right to alert the verderers to the consequences for cattle commoners of national policy changes for agriculture and the environment (A&T, 3rd March).

Now, for the first time in almost a century, farmers are fully exposed to world market forces. Unable to influence prices received for their products, their problems are aggravated by high inflation in input costs.

In principle, New Forest commoners should gain from an offsetting advantage. They have an indispensable role maintaining and enhancing many special qualities of the national park.

Commoning practices are the foundation for much of the New Forest’s beauty and biodiverse ecology, collectively recognised in national and international designations as worthy of protection.

People also benefit from enjoyment of the Forest landscape for relaxation, recreation and sport.

In practice, such valued sources of public benefit are not properly remunerated. For the most part, people acquire them for free.

Payments to commoners made under the Verderers’ Grazing Scheme are only a partial solution.

As Mrs Stride points out, phasing out the Basic Payment Scheme – a different source – has not been accompanied by answers to questions about money available under the Environmental Land Management Schemes replacing it.

For all farmers, signs are that a cash-strapped government is intent on obtaining maximum environmental benefit for minimum taxpayer outlay.

That is a valid objective for economic efficiency, but only if the value farmers contribute to society is properly reflected in monetary terms.

For England and Wales, the annual Farm Business Survey helps to fill the data gap. But for New Forest commoners specifically, there is no comparable evidence.

Commoners have been essential to the New Forest ecosystem since time immemorial. If that is to remain so, commoning must pay.

Importantly, the language also needs to change. Money received by farmers for public goods they produce are not subsidies any more than is, say, the price received for a beef animal at market.

They are payments for benefits which, because anyone can enjoy them without others’ exclusion or loss, have no market price.

There is urgent need to investigate the economics of commoning. It should be the evidence base for determining the financial remuneration necessary to sustain commoning, and so the fabric of the New Forest, for the long term.

Dr Keith Howe – senior research fellow,

University of Exeter

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SIR – In your article "Is end nigh for Forest cattle?” (A&T, 3rd March), you reported the claim that cows roaming the Forest “deliver for... carbon storage”. In fact, they do the opposite.

One cow emits methane equivalent to the greenhouse gases released by driving 16,000 miles.

But the bigger issue is the effect on unenclosed woodlands. Walk through the woodland areas of the New Forest and you will not find any young deciduous trees (other than a few silver birch). The ponies and cows (and deer) have seen to that.

What you will find, however, are an increasing number of fallen trees as winter storms intensify. These trees are not being replaced: Forestry England refuse to plant any and natural regeneration is prevented by the grazing stock.

Forestry England officials admit that some wooded areas will be gone in a generation. This will result in a huge emission of carbon dioxide as the trees die and decay without being replaced by their offspring.

A mature, 200-year-old oak stores the same amount of carbon as you release by driving 16,000 miles a year for 10 years.

There may be half a million such trees in unprotected woodland in the New Forest – that is a colossal store of carbon.

As these trees fall year by year, a large part of this carbon store eventually makes its way into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Scientists, globally and in the UK, are concerned that poorly managed “old-growth phase” forests could release carbon on a scale similar to human fossil fuel use.

The New Forest ponies are often called the "architects of the Forest" and so they are. But like some architects, their design reflects what they want, not what is best for their client!

In the past, commoners played by different rules which benefited all the habitats of the New Forest. As your article describes, modern commoners have become professional farmers.

Maybe it is time to consult a new architect to “design” the New Forest, and I agree that the end of the Basic Payment Scheme might well be the catalyst for this change.

Chris Walter,

Burley