Forest of Dean - Ecology

Ecology

The forest is composed of both deciduous and evergreen trees. Predominant is oak, both pedunculate and sessile. Beech is also common, and sweet chestnut has grown here for many centuries. The forest is also home to Foxgloves and other wild flowers. Conifers include some Weymouth Pine dating from 1781, Norway spruce, douglas fir and larch. The deer are predominantly fallow deer and these have been present in the forest since the second world war currently numbering around 300 (there were no deer in the Dean from about 1855 when they were removed in accordance with an Act of Parliament. A number of the fallow deer in the central area of the forest are melanistic. More recently a few roe deer and muntjac deer have arrived, spreading in from the East but in much smaller numbers.

The Forest is also home to wild boar; the exact number is currently unknown but exceeds a hundred. The boar were illegally re-introduced to the Forest in 2006. A population in the Ross-on-Wye area on the northern edge of the forest escaped from a wild boar farm around 1999 and are believed to be of pure Eastern European origin; in a second introduction, a domestic herd was dumped near Staunton in 2004, but these were not pure bred wild boar —attempts to locate the source of the illegal dumps have been unsuccessful. The boar can now be found in many parts of the Forest.

Locally there are mixed feelings about the presence of boar. Problems have included the ploughing up of gardens and picnic areas, attacking dogs and panicking horses, road traffic accidents, and ripping open of rubbish bags. The local authority undertook a public consultation and have recommended to the Verderers that control to a lower level is necessary - this is currently being considered. Under its international obligations the UK government is obliged to consider the reintroduction of species made extinct through the activities of man, the wild boar included.

The Dean is also well known for its Western birds; Pied flycatchers, Redstarts, Wood Warblers and Hawfinches can be regularly seen at RSPB Nagshead. The mixed forest also supports Britain's best concentration of Goshawks and a viewing site at New Fancy is manned during February and March. Peregrine Falcons can be easily seen nesting from the viewpoint at Symonds Yat rock. Mandarin ducks, which nest up in the trees, and Reed warblers can be seen at Cannop Ponds and Cannop Brook, running from the ponds through Parkend, is famed for its Dippers.

Butterflies of note are the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Wood White and the White Admiral or Limenitis camilla. Gorsty Knoll is famed for its glow-worms and Woorgreen's lake for its dragonflies.