Going Over Old Ground

Heavy horses have once again been proving their worth in the woodland restoration at Dartmoor’s Fingle Woods. Since the Woodland Trust and National Trust took over the site four years ago, local timber logging horses have demonstrated how, by using traditional methods of woodland management, the gradual restoration of coniferous woodlands can be done in a wildlife friendly way. The task of the heavy horses is to extract the felled timber from areas of dense plantation woodland; opening it up to let in more sunlight and trigger the restoration of natural habitats. In these artificially shady woods the wild flowers struggle to reproduce, leaving the ground flora depleted. Then, the ancient woodland soil can lose its structure and be at serious risk of erosion. All this heavy work is done with very little damage to the soil, allowing it to recover and wild plants to become re-established.

If you would like to experience the old charcoal burners’ hearths and retrace the historical dray route that links them up, you can visit Fingle Woods over the Christmas and New Year holidays. You will be able to meet the working horses, but they won’t be there for long. Dartmoor Horse Loggers and Rowan Working Horses will be teaming up again for a forestry contract in South Wales in January. It’s a heavy workload for these heavy horses; each of them may bring a touch of glamour to Fingle Woods but they are not just a pretty face!by Matt Parkins