From hardy sheep breeds and native-breed cattle to Water Buffalo, grazing animals play an important role in helping the Trust conserve and enhance a rich variety of habitats across its nature reserves. At this time of year, their work is particularly valuable. As many wildflowers and grasses flower and set seed, livestock help maintain the varied vegetation structure that plants and wildlife need to thrive, while creating important habitat for ground-nesting birds. By grazing selectively, they help prevent scrub and vigorous vegetation from taking over, ensuring rarer species are given the space and resources they need to flourish.

Let’s take a look at our animal supporters and find out how and where we’re getting a helping hoof!

Sheep

The Trust’s different sheep breeds each have an important role to play in conservation grazing and have been chosen specifically for their feeding characteristics, resilience to more extreme conditions, and general hardiness.

At Aldbury Nowers Nature Reserve near Tring, thanks to funding from Dacorum Borough Council’s Green Community Grant, our reserves team took on lambs this spring for the first time ever. The flock of 22 Soay sheep includes 13 lambs, which are grazing the chalk grassland to support plants such as Cowslip, Common Rock-rose, Marjoram and Carline Thistle to flourish. The flora provides a varied source of nectar for a variety of butterfly species, including Dark Green Fritillary and Chalk Hill Blue. The Soay flock are a hardy, primitive breed, which originates from St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides and is well adapted to tackling scrub and grazing lower-nutrient grassland. They thrive on sparse vegetation and can eat tougher vegetation that other breeds may avoid.

Our reserves team have recently moved the Shetland sheep from Amwell Nature Reserve near Ware to graze the meadow at Fir & Pond Woods Nature Reserve near Potters Bar. The Trust conducts routine health checks on their grazing animals and these show the flock are in good health, with many sheep having increased in body condition since being at Amwell.

At Patmore Heath Nature Reserve in Albury, Herdwick and Hebridean sheep continue to rotationally graze the reserve, helping to manage scrub and conserve the heathland that is home to a wide variety of grasses and wildflowers, including Devils-bit Scabious.

Cattle

This year we have more cattle grazing on our reserves and we’ve seen greater willingness from graziers to manage challenging logistics to get animals on to areas of our land that aren’t always easy to access. The primary reason for this is the impact of the heatwaves and lack of rain - some of our wet grassland reserves have remained relatively lush in comparison to the scorched fields that offer livestock little in the way of grazing. It’s a win, win situation – we’re seeing our reserves benefit from additional grazing at Danemead, Rye Meads and King’s Meads and the cattle are benefitting from a good feed!

At Beane Marsh Nature Reserve in Hertford, we now have six cattle grazing the reserve – an increase from previous years. The reserve was not grazed last year because the Trust’s usual grazier was unable to provide livestock, making this year’s return particularly welcome.

Cattle have also recently returned to Fir & Pond Woods, where the critically endangered plant, Scarce Tufted-sedge is now established. This has allowed the Trust to remove part of the fencing used to protect the plants, which now provides access for the cattle. Their grazing will help reduce competing vegetation, with the added benefit of reducing the amount of manual cutting required by the reserves team and volunteers.

Water Buffalo

Our livestock are doing work that would otherwise require an enormous amount of work by people and heavy machinery. Animals are chosen for their ability to tackle the job in hand while creating the small-scale variations in habitat that so many species depend on. 

At Thorley Wash Nature Reserve to the south of Bishops Stortford, rare fen habitat provides its own set of conservation challenges – ditches and swampy areas. For the third successive summer, a herd of Water Buffalo have been doing a great job in clearing the vegetation and improving the site. Species such as Ragged Robin and the red-listed Marsh Marigold already appear to be more abundant thanks to the animal’s efforts.

Using livestock to assist our work on reserves means we also have to consider the risks presented by the reserve environment, as well as ensuring appropriate vaccination and welfare measures are in place. We are extremely grateful to all our volunteer livestock checkers, who support this work and give their time to benefit wildlife.

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