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New for 2025,  the Trust is joining forces with the Verderers, the New Forest National Park Authority and Forestry England  to support “Bag it – Bin it”, a major campaign to encourage responsible dog ownership and asking those who don’t already, to pick up poo.

“We believe most dog owners are responsible, and part of that is picking up their poo,” says Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, former Chairman of the National Park, who chairs the special dog action group. “But a lot of owners don’t and you only have to look around car parks to see the piles of disgusting poo. It’s a health risk, it harms the forest, and can affect the enjoyment of many people. The answer is so simple – pick up poo, bag it, and bin it.”

The campaign will include posters in places used by dog owners such as vets’ surgeries and traders; leaflets to be given out to forest users; special displays to be used at shows and forest car park events; and the purchase of 6000 bags to give away.

“One of the myths we’d like to dispel is that of the poo fairy,” says Heather Gould, Co-Chair of the New Forest Dog Owners Group. “Why some people do the right thing and bag their dog’s poo, but then hang it in a bushor a tree, is beyond us. Please, bag poo, and take it to a bin, either in a car park or at home where it can go in the general waste.”

A further reason for the campaign is to counter the risk of disease. Several diseases can be passed to humans through dog poo, such as Toxicara which is a roundworm infection. There is also a potential risk to cattle from Neospora being passed through dog poo to roaming cattle and causes cows to abort prematurely. Finally, there’s increasing evidence that the currently high level of foxes, which also spread disease, is in part due to dog poo, which they eat when other food is short.

The New Forest Trust is co-funding the work radio-tracking the rare Bechsteins bat in the North of the New Forest to enable conservationists to better understand their use of mixed woodland, gathering evidence of maternity roosts, foraging areas and commuting routes.

The New Forest Raptor Monitoring Programme aims to monitor the breeding raptor assemblage in the New Forest primarily through field-based observation of breeding pairs and collection of data on population size, distribution, and productivity. The observational data will be supplemented by ringing and tracking data that aim to provide new insights into foraging movements and post-fledging dispersal. In 2025 the New Forest Trust is funding the GPS tracking of juvenile Goshawks under BTO licence.

The Trust is funding a programme to start vaccinating commoners’ cattle against BVD (Bovine Viral Diarrhoea). Commoners are volunteering to have their Forest-run cows and replacement heifers vaccinated against BVD. This is being done on a first come, first served basis and administered when cattle are marked up for the Forest or commons.  

New Forest CDA Chair Andrew Parry-Norton said: “This is an initiative we have been working on for some time so I am very pleased the funding has now been approved for it. Vaccinating cattle clearly has a number of benefits, with one of the most significant being that it would stop abortion and the more cattle that are vaccinated, the greater chance we have of reducing the transmission of the disease. Being able to offer the vaccination is also a way of helping commoners out from a financial perspective which we know is extremely important right now.”