Agricultural History Review, Volume 45 Part 2 (1997), pp. 137–148

Much writing on the social ecology of English forests has been cast in isolation from their evolving natural ecologies. Using evidence from Whichwood Forest in Oxfordshire, it is demonstrated that social and natural ecologies were inextricably intertwined. As a wood pasture environment, the overall traditions of Whichwood's management and use were by no means detached from the needs of ecological stability. However, over the centuries, periods of lax forest regulation acted in combination with the increasing demands of the COlnmoning populace to effect what was eventually to become a spiral of deterioration in Whichwood's natural ecology. Some measure of the deterioration is provided in studies undertaken by ecologists in the twentieth century when parts of the forest were placed under scientific protection. When these studies are coupled with the documentary record of forest use and misuse, the picture that emerges is one of steadily increasing ecological stress. By the late eighteenth century, Whichwood's forest commoners faced not only the pressures of the refomfing agrarian interest, but also the undermining of the very ecosystem which underpinned their livelihoods. 

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