N – A-Z of Commoning and the New Forest

The New Forest Trust is a charity dedicated to preserving the special qualities of the Forest. And because commoning is so important to the Forest, much of the Trust’s work aims to help commoning. One of the Trust’s projects has been to provide reflective collars for the ponies, so they stand less chance of being hit by cars at night. The Trust also runs the New Forest Diamond Jubilee Award, which recognises people who have helped protect or promote the Forest.

The New Forest Centre at Lyndhurst is a great place to go to learn more about commoning and the Forest. There is a museum with interesting displays of all aspects of Forest life. The Centre, which is just off the main car park in the middle of the village, is also the home of the Christopher Tower reference library, which is a specialist collection of books, photographs and other documents about the Forest.

The New Forest Association is one of the oldest conservation charities in the world, and was set up to fight plans to do away with the common land in the Forest. Today it is still an active watchdog, keeping an eye on the government organisations that run the Forest.

National Parks are areas of the UK that are given extra protection because of their special landscape, wildlife and culture.

The New Forest has been a National Park since 2005. Although it is one of the smallest National Parks, it gets more visitors than most of the others. The New Forest National Park Authority’s website is at:

www.newforestnpa.gov.uk