New Forest commoner
The contribution of New Forest commoners to maintaining the area's ecology and landscape, as well as their historic role as a living tradition and heritage cultural minority, has been recognised by the Government of the United Kingdom, and the New Forest National Park Authority has acknowledged its commitment to protecting and supporting the community and the practice.
[4] Though Forest laws were now enacted to preserve this "New Forest" as a location for royal deer hunting, and interference with the king's deer and its forage was punished, the inhabitants of the area (commoners) had pre-existing Anglo-Saxon rights of common which were recognised by the Crown and governed by verderers.
These common rights were passed on generationally through local families alongside the land that they were tied to, and over the centuries cohered a number of historic cultural practices, customs and values which are maintained to this day.
Commoners define themselves by their cultural practices, which are over a thousand years old, their community and their native territory of the New Forest.
The rights of common are: to turn horses and cattle (but only rarely sheep) out into the Forest to graze (common pasture), to gather fuel wood (estovers), to cut peat for fuel (turbary), to dig clay (marl), and to turn out pigs between September and November to eat fallen acorns and beechnuts (pannage or mast).
[11][12] Commoners must have backup land, outside the Forest, to accommodate these depastured animals when necessary, for example during a foot-and-mouth disease epidemic.
Grazing of commoners' ponies and cattle is an essential part of the management of the forest, helping to maintain the heathland, bog, grassland and wood-pasture habitats and their associated wildlife.
[14] The cattle and ponies living on the New Forest are not completely feral, but are owned by the commoners, who pay an annual fee for each animal turned out.
The Verderers are a statutory body with ancient roots, who share management of the forest with the Forestry Commission and National park authority.
For much of the year the ponies live in small groups, usually consisting of an older mare, her daughters, and their foals, all keeping to a discrete area of the Forest called a "haunt."
They normally are turned out only for a limited period in the spring and summer, when they gather several groups of mares and youngstock into larger herds and defend them against other stallions.
This ensures that foals are born neither too early (before the spring grass is coming through), nor too late (as the colder weather is setting in and the grazing and browsing on the Forest is dying back) in the following year.
[20] The stallion scheme resulted in a reduction of genetic diversity in the ponies running out on the New Forest, and to counteract this and preserve the hardiness of Forest-run ponies, the Verderers introduced the Bloodline Diversity Project, which will use hardy Forest-run mares, mostly over eleven years old, bred to stallions that have not been run out on the Forest, or closely related to those that have.
[25] Animals surplus to their owner's requirements often are sold at the Beaulieu Road Pony Sales, run by the New Forest Livestock Society.
[27] The Agisters keep a constant watch over the condition of the Forest-running stock, and an animal may be "ordered off" the Forest at any time.
[15] The rest of the year, the lives of the ponies are relatively unhindered unless they need veterinary attention or additional feeding, when they are usually taken off the Forest.
[32][33] The races do not have a fixed course, but instead are run across the open Forest, so competitors choose their own routes around obstructions such as inclosures (forestry plantations), fenced paddocks, and bogs.
