Living In
More than 34,000 people live within the New Forest National Park, making it the most densely-populated national park in England.
The New Forest is a landscape shaped by human activity and by New Forest ponies, sometimes called ‘the architects of the Forest’. It is used for ‘commoning’ – those who have the right to graze their animals on the open Forest – and for forestry, agriculture and even quarrying.
Unusually for a national park, almost half of the land is in public ownership - 'vested in' the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and managed by the Forestry Commission.
