Exceptions are reindeer pastoral

woodland with birch and pine in subarctic Europe, mountain summer pastures that extend into montane woodlands, and pastoral woodlands and scrublands in parts of Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Balkans, where wood-pastures to some extent retain their traditional usage. In Central Europe, wood-pasture was common practice until, with the agrarian reforms in the nineteenth century, it was banned almost everywhere, and remained so except in times of destitution. Banning wood-pasture and litter-raking was a consequence of the shortage of wood and timber when the demands of the growing population and industries increased enormously (Behre 2008; Küster 1995; Luick 2009). Wood-pastures in common use

formed part of the allmende (common land). Depending on local environment, traditions and needs, wood-pasture in the allmende was grazed by cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, EX 527 chemical structure geese and, prohibited first of all, goats. Trees were coppiced or pollarded for firewood, others cut for timber. Leaf-hay was also produced by lopping or shredding trees to feed the animals in late summer and RAAS inhibitor autumn (Ellenberg 1996; Luick 2009; Machatschek 2002). While wood-pasture as part of the allmende did not normally involve regular cycles of pollarding or coppicing, other land-use systems that provided wood, charcoal, grass and even annual crops such as rye incorporated pasturing as part of the regular cycles. In the north-west German Siegerland, the hauberg cycle involved coppice, cereal cultivation, fallow and wood-pasture (Behre 2008;

Pott 1990; Pott and ASK1 Hüppe 1991). To prevent the animals from eating the regrowth of trees, coppices were excluded from grazing for a number of years subsequent to cutting. In recent years, semi-open pasture is being re-introduced in Germany as a conservation concept to preserve the biodiversity of pasture-woodland landscapes (Finck et al. 2002; Gerken et al. 2008). Such concepts use components of traditional farming (wood-pasture or other pastoral systems) and robust breeds, which are kept in a ‘semi-wild’ manner all year round in large grazing sites. In Britain, wood-pasture commons similar to allmende existed (McAdam 2005; Rackham 2007). They are to be distinguished from fenced parks and non-fenced Forests, both of which were private lands used for gamekeeping, especially of deer (Rackham 2004; Spencer 2002). Game parks have a long tradition in selleck chemical Europe at least since Roman times, whilst Forests were for centuries the hunting grounds of nobles. Thanks to Forests and to similar game reserves and grazed woodlands on the European continent, old-growth woodlands survived in some lowland areas where almost all other woodland was cleared. In northern Europe, traditional management of forests has frequently been connected with hay-making, such as in the southeast Fennoscandian and Baltic lövängar.