Riparian Woodland project – deer impacts

We’ve just been finishing off a report quantifying the risks to a riparian planting project posed by deer browsing. The project is aiming to plant native woodland at landscape scale across a number of forests in northern Scotland, in order to help with water quality – it also has relevance to Natural Flood Management. The work involved deer dung density assessments and browsing impact assessments, as well as looking at stocking density of trees planted. It has been a good project to be involved in, and one we hope to follow up as the potential for deer to impact adversely on the sites is quite high.