CATTLES and New Forest ponies on Holt Heath are helping to re-create a special ‘mosaic of habitats’ for rare plants and birds straight from the pages of a Thomas Hardy novel.

National Trust and Natural England experts are pleased with the work their grazing herd have been doing since they were let loose on the heath last August.

The scheme to reintroduce grazers after more than 50 years hit a couple of teething problems when a couple of cows were killed on the heath’s road.

But Pete Sampson, the Kingston Lacy estate’s head ranger, and Ian Nicol, from Natural England, say they’re pleased with the early signs that the cows and horses are helping to re-create the Egdon Heath from Hardy’s The Return of the Native.

Mr Nicol said: “We have dry, almost desert-like heath, running down to extensive areas of mire, where cattle will also benefit.

“In the absence of grazing you get very deep tussocks of vegetation and very competitive moor and cotton grasses, which mean nothing else can get a look in.”

Examples include fly-catching sundews and rare marsh club mosses. And you can already see where cattle have broken the ground up underfoot and trimmed the growth, giving space for other plants.

“They will really benefit this area over time,” Mr Nicol said. “We’ve not even had a full season’s grazing but we can start to see where they’re having an impact.”

In the past, heath dwellers would use heather for thatch and animal bedding, as well as crushing up gorse to feed to the animals. Heather was even used along the road through Beech Avenue, near Badbury Rings.

Man has used the land since the Bronze Age, and it’s only in the last half century that that has ceased.

The Trust and NE want to preserve the heath, one of Dorset’s three largest sites, and make sure dartford warblers, sand lizards and curlews still call it home. It’s also the only place curlews nest in the county.

Mr Sampson said: “There’s a really diverse cycle of life. If you did nothing and it was left to itself you would lose it to scrub, birch and bracken. That would be a crying shame.

“If you look at the New Forest, they still have a lot of heathland flora species that Dorset has lost purely down to lack of grazing.

“That’s why we made a big drive because it is a successful way of managing the habitat. We’ve got a conservative amount of 35 cows and six ponies to start off with so the land’s not hit too hard.”