It is too often the case in Great Britain that ‘wildlife management’ ultimately means ‘wildlife persecution’. Deer have not escaped this trend, with culling long being a go-to management technique utilised in the country. As an organisation dedicated to the safeguarding of wildlife, Protect the Wild is always eager to spotlight initiatives which demonstrate that another way is possible. One such project is happening in the Lowlands of Scotland. Welcome to Willow Worlds, a “wildlife enabling force of nature.”
As its name suggests, Willow Worlds is an initiative centred around the willow tree. More precisely, this community-led project in Fife is busy planting native trees of all kinds and surrounding them with ‘fedges’ – living fence hedges made of willow – to protect the trees from overgrazing by deer.
Deer can negatively impact vegetation when they are present in large numbers, which is the case in Fife. Indeed, deer populations are currently large in many areas of Britain. This is because the country has historically persecuted any predators they have, such as wolves, out of existence, leaving their populations to grow and spread. Moreover, the way sporting estates operate has contributed to high deer numbers because these estates typically manage the animals to ensure an abundance of good ‘trophies’ for shooting.
Keeping deer numbers down is one of the justifications that staghound packs give to continue their bloodthirsty pursuit. However, the British Deer Society has taken the position that it is “unable to justify the deliberate pursuit of healthy deer with hounds as an acceptable method of control.” Protect the Wild wholeheartedly agrees with this.
The impact deer have on vegetation and wooded areas, including commercial wood plantations, is one of the key reasons why they are killed in culls in Britain. In Scotland, most culling occurs in the Highlands, but it happens to an extent in the Lowlands too.
Willow Worlds is researching a non-lethal way to stop deers damaging trees, by changing their behaviour with the assistance of willow fedge.
Teacher Duncan Zuill is the founder of the Willow Worlds project. In the initiative’s Substack newsletter, where its findings are being documented, Zuill explained why he thinks non-lethal management offers a more effective solution to the overgrazing problem. He said:
“As far as the trees are concerned, it’s no good shooting the deer. We’d never shoot enough of them to make a difference. It only takes one industrious stag to devastate a tree planation over several years. We need to redirect the deer, so they can live wild without wrecking our tree-planting efforts.”
Protecting saplings from deer
Protect the Wild spoke with Zuill about the Willow Worlds project. He explained that it has its roots close by, in the equally magical sounding Bats Wood. This once grassy area on a former playing field of the Levenmouth Academy is now rich with nature, thanks to Zuill, Levenmouth pupils, and others, planting vegetation and creating wildlife habitats in it since 2018.
It is in Bat’s Wood that the experiments with willow began. Zuill explained that they first planted a willow circle there, as a social space. Then they decided to use fedge made from the fast-growing tree to line a pathway. Deer damage was evident along the fedge-lined pathway, but the animals could not remove bark from the entire trunk, so the willow survived. This discovery led to experimentation with creating circles of willow fedge to try and protect growing trees.
As Zuill wrote on Substack, what they discovered about willow fedge was revelatory:
“Inside these living walls, saplings grew unmolested, nourished by mulch and organic matter… Like the influence of wolves on a landscape, these thickets created places where deer didn’t go—without excluding them entirely, like deer fences.”
In Willow Worlds, which is supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Bat’s Wood research is being scaled up. Other community-led groups are collaborating with the project to create three “little hill-forests” in nearby Muiredge Park, all of which will be encircled with fedge, like a trinity of neighbouring nature havens all wrapped in a willow embrace.
Fedging doesn’t just shift problems elsewhere
Muiredge Park already has one wee forest, which Zuill was also involved with. Wee forests are Scotland’s version of the ‘tiny forests’ conceived by the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki. These small forested areas, packed with hundreds of trees, have been popping up all over Europe in recent years. This is not by accident, but by design, as Earthwatch Europe has promoted their creation in the UK and elsewhere since 2020. Indeed, the tiny forest movement is a global affair, with the many in countries like the US too.
But the three Willow World circles will be unique, given they will be shielded from deer by willow fedge rather than a fence. In essence, the difference between wooded areas with fedge and those with fences is that the former continues to provide a certain level of sustenance to deer, as they can browse on the outward-facing side of the fedge.
Ultimately, this means that fedge promises to be a solution to over-browsing that doesn’t simply create a problem elsewhere by excluding deer entirely, like fencing does. Exclusion means that deer have to seek out other wooded areas for food or rubbing spots for the males when their antlers get itchy.
Nonetheless, there are uncertainties in how Willow Worlds’ fedge-encircled hill-forests will fare in a public area like Muiredge Park, not only with the deer, but with the general public too. Zuill pointed out that fedges are vulnerable in the first couple of months, until their roots are developed, which means they need to be initially undisturbed. How well trees will grow in the three areas, with each of their soils prepared in different ways, is also an open question. Time (and research) will tell.
A diversity of solutions
But Zuill is hopeful that fedges offer a promising solution to overgrazing deer and other problems. Plastic pollution is among the issues it could tackle because tree plantations are typically protected by plastic tree guards. Oftentimes, these guards remain in the environment long after the trees have grown – or failed to grow – adding to the plastic pollution crisis. Fedges are more sustainable in another sense too, considering that they grow along with the trees they safeguard. This means that branches of the fedge can be periodically cut off and used to make more fedge, Zuill pointed out.
The Willow Worlds founder believes that fedge could be a way of doing plastic-free tree planting almost anywhere, with the willow safeguarding young trees not only from deer but also trampling and disturbance by people.
However, fedge does have limitations with regard to protection from deer. In Bat’s Wood and Muiredge Park’s Willow Worlds, the aim is to safeguard young trees from roe deer specifically, as this species is common in the area. Zuill highlighted that fedge would stand little chance against bigger species, such as red deer. They would “just burst through a willow fedge while eating it all,” Zuill said.
As a recent study highlighted, the reintroduction of wolves in certain places where red deer live could control their numbers. The study focused on the Scottish Highlands, calculating that a population of less than 200 wolves would sufficiently reduce deer numbers to a threshold that would allow “substantial native woodland expansion” and bring associated climate benefits.
In other words, there is no one size fits all solution to tackling overgrazing by deer. Solutions need to be diverse, like the natural world itself, and particular to the situation they are deployed in.
For its part, willow fedge promises to be a humane solution for overgrazing by certain deer species, while also addressing plastic pollution by reducing the need for plastic tree guards. Of course, the fedges also ultimately help to tackle the climate and nature crises by safeguarding nature-rich, carbon-storing forests. Protect the Wild is excited to see how the Willow Worlds project develops. To follow its progress, you can subscribe to the project’s Substack newsletter here.
Featured images via Duncan Zuill and the Willow Worlds project
