Silage and Harvesting - Service for Farmers/Landowners
With grass cutting season in full swing, and young fawns and calves hiding out in the long grass, large machinery can have a devastating impact, killing any young animals not quick enough to get out of the way. I offer a free service to any landowners, where I will walk and check fields prior to cutting. Please give me a call if I can help.
Deer Crossing
A client has an established mixed woodland, which is was originally deer fenced 20 years ago. The original fencing dimensions (pig wire size) where not sufficient to prevent the Roe Deer entering, and they had been observed on one occasion jumping through the small gaps. The Red Deer had been prevented from entering until this winter (2018), when as result of rotting posts, sign was found of one Red Deer (yearling) being inside the fenced area. This was a solitary animal and clearly wanted to get back to the herd from the tracks and sign.
The owner had wanted to remove the fence as the woodland was now established and the impact of any deer could be managed by stalking. This met the with the objectives of the Woodland Management Plan. The owner was keen to have both the Red and Roe on the property from a personal desire as well. The cost of removing the fence was prohibitive though and so this was not an option.
To overcome the immediate issue of the solitary animal, the deer gates where opened and the Red Deer moved in numbers with an acceptable impact on the habitat. Over the course of the next few months, it became clear that the Red Deer had found an alternative way into the woodland and where squeezing through the wire. To prevent this causing possible injuries, we decided to turn this into a deer crossing and to save on costs, recycled fencing materials and hazel wands were used.
The idea behind this is being that if the Red and Roe have a greater freedom of movement through the woodland and neighbouring areas, it will help reduce the impact and thus reduce stalking/culling requirement as the burden of the population will be spread over a greater area.
The video below shows a montage of trail camera clips taken from the first few days of having the crossing in place. An added bonus is that it will also allow us to keep an eye on the health and wellbeing of the deer using the crossing and focus any culls on deer of poor standard.
For information on fencing the Forestry Commission offer a good resource which can be found by following this hyperlink; https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/forest-fencing/
Roe Buck trail camera footage
This Roe Buck is regular visitor to my own small piece of woodland. Looking at the times he visits he is a very early riser and must have a circular route as he tends to only be seen going in this direction.
Research Papers
Having spent considerable time researching the science and facts behind deer management, I thought I would share some of those papers and research.
The Health of the Wild Red Deer of Exmoor and an Assessment of their role in the Transmission of Disease to Livestock and Humans.
An interesting blog post by Charlie Pye-Smith on why good management matters.
The Impact of Deer on Woodland Biodiversity. A Forestry Commission paper by R. Gill
The impact of deer on lowland woodland invertebrates by A.J.A Stewart
Ecological impacts of increasing numbers of deer in British Woodland by R.J Fuller and R.M.A Gill.
The ranging behaviour, habitat-use and impact of Deer in Oak woods and Heather Moors of Exmoor and the Quantock Hills by Dr. Jochen Langbein
Colonization of the Scottish islands via long-distance Neolithic transport of Red Deer by Stanton, Mulville and Bruford.
Breeding and post-breeding responses of woodland birds to modification of habitat structure by deer. By Holt, Fuller and Dolman
This is the first few, I’ll post more references from my archives and will include some of the books I have read on the subject as well.
Spring Habitat Impact Assessments
We’ve been busy over the last few weeks compiling the Habitat Impact Assessments. We use various techniques depending on the foresters requirement. The Deer Initiative Habitat Impact Assessment gives us a good understanding of the activity and impact in established and mixed woodland and can be tailored toward the requirements of the Woodland Management Plan. The Nearest Neighbour technique gives us a percentage level of damage against certain criteria which is very useful for the forester to gauge the impact on young commercial tree crops. The photos below are examples of ones we include in our written reports.
