reaching the Forest, and most people used a few areas intensively (e.g.
Chingford Plain, High Beach), but by the 1930s the motor car made the whole
Forest accessible to a growing and mobile population. Now even more people
live within easy reach and increased affluence has led to a new, intensive use,
horse-riding.
In addition to "green rides" made after the passing of the Act, wider paths
and latterly formal horse rides have been laid to enable pedestrians and riders to
get about the Forest without excessive conflict or further damage to the Forest
floor. Car parks have been made along some of the Forest roads.
Other recognised activities are formal games and field studies. The latter
range from casual field visits to the organised and systematic teaching provided
by the Suntrap Field and Study Centre and the Epping Forest Conservation
Centre. These visits benefit the students and engender respect for the Forest,
but even with the strict supervision by the Centre staff there is inevitably some
wear and tear on places regularly visited.
All these activities bring home the conflict between the Forest as a resort, a
place with a 'natural aspect', an outdoor classroom and a site of national
biological importance. This conflict is not unique to Epping. Complete
satisfaction to one or the other side is impossible and compromise is the best
that can be achieved. What that compromise should be and how it should be
attained is a matter exercising the Conservators, the Epping Forest Con-
servation Centre and staff of the Nature Conservancy Council at the moment.
The main effort toward protecting wildlife has been put into byelaws (e.g.
prohibiting the taking of plants and animals). More recently, the Conservators
have promoted means of making visitors aware of the wealth of wildlife in the
Forest (e.g. by supporting the Epping Forest Conservation Centre).
In spite of this, the biological record is mainly one of decline and disap-
pearance. Some of it can be ascribed to picking and uprooting of plants, some
perhaps to bird-nesting and some to the general increased use of the Forest and
its roads. Mobile species can, in theory, find sanctuary and breeding sites in the
woods, meadows and marshes outside the Forest. Plants and animals having
poor powers of locomotion or dispersal e.g. saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria),
broomrape (Orobanche rapum-genistae) or have special habitat requirements
e.g. sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), polypody (Polypodium vulgare), greater
burmarigold (Bidens tripartita) cannot escape the changes caused by horse-
riders, car parks, the erosion of pond margins and the continual trampling of
the Forest floor. Nor can mosses and lichens escape the polluted air.
Crazing
Older than any of these uses is the right of grazing. This is the sole
remaining right from the early days of the Common. Strict rules limited
numbers of cattle, but in recent years the numbers on the Forest have declined
from over a thousand to a hundred or two at most. As a result much of the
pasture has gone rank or proceeded to secondary woodland. The Conservators
are empowered to put their own cattle on the Forest but, in spite of the ad-
vantage to wildlife, have not done so.
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