A distinct, but important variation of natural woodland is wood pasture. In parts of Britain, wood pastures were created through very structured woodland management regimes, with pollarded trees (growing above the browsing height of livestock) standing above grazed woodland ground floras. In RCT grazing in woodlands is a long-established practice and much of the semi-natural woodland of the County Borough would have been used in this way. Such management creates open glades and clearings in woodlands, suppressing regeneration, bramble and bracken. Wood pasture creates the habitat conditions for redstarts, wood warblers and pied flycatchers, fritillary butterflies, and, if grazing is not too heavy, it can develop species-rich ground floras. The drive to woodland regeneration, based on the total exclusion of livestock from woodlands, has had great success in allowing woodland regeneration, but key habitats and species can suffer under such regimes. Carefully controlled livestock grazing can therefore be an important tool in maintaining diversity in our woodlands.

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In RCT, a handful of relic parklands support habitat similar to wood pasture. These historic parks (and other occasional odd corners) support often veteran trees (many of which may have been planted) often set within grazed (or mown) parklands. Oaks, ash, beech and sometimes sweet chestnuts are often massive, usually half dead, and form individual, free-standing ecosystems for all sorts of fungi, lichen, wood boring and scavenging invertebrates, birds and bats. Some very specialised species depend on parkland veterans. Little or none of the parklands in RCT have received biodiversity survey assessment. We simply don’t know which key fungi or invertebrates occur, and while we suspect they are, we don’t understand the importance of these sites as bat habitats.