Animal accidents

The open landscape of the New Forest where ponies, cattle, donkeys, sheep and pigs roam free is one of the distinctive features of the New Forest National Park. This is one of the few areas in England, especially in the busy and developed south, where drivers often come face-to-face with animals on the road, both in daylight and at night.

The animals are owned by people called commoners, and it’s the animals’ free grazing activity across the forest that helps shape the landscape we know and love today.

With other organisations, we regularly check accident data for trends that will help us focus efforts. You can see how the total number of animals killed and injured each year has changed since 1990 by downloading the latest animal accident analysis from the list below. You can also see data on different kinds of animals, and the effect of time of year and time of day. The various maps of animal accidents show very clearly that some routes (usually those with most traffic) have many more incidents than elsewhere.

Every animal killed is a great loss to the Forest, and to its owner. However, the overall trend since 1991 is clearly downwards and most years since 2007 have had fewer than 100 animals killed and injured. In 2019, 58 animals were killed and a further 32 were injured. In 2020 when traffic was reduced by Covid-19 restrictions, 50 animals were killed (the lowest on record) and a further 21 were injured.

The number of animals grazing on the Forest has risen significantly in recent years, which increases the likelihood of accidents. However, the percentage killed fell to all-time lows of 0.38% (one out of every 263 animals) in 2019 and 0.32% (one out of every 312 animals) in 2020. Cattle and pigs spend only part of the year on the Forest, so the figures for ponies alone are probably more pertinent, but even these show a clear downward trend in the percentage killed, falling to new lows of 0.60% in 2019 and 0.49% in 2020.

The challenge is, of course, to reduce the number of accidents every year, so the commoners, other local people and a wide range of organisations are always looking for new ideas. In recent years the Highway Authority has improved road warning signage on all of the high risk routes including warnings painted on the road surface. The Shared Forest project, managed by the Commoners Defence Association, is working with local employers to increase their employees’ awareness of the animals on the unfenced roads and encouraging them to drive more carefully. Each winter, when most accidents happen, there is a special publicity campaign to raise awareness of the risks among local drivers who regularly travel across the Forest – everyone can play their part in this, especially though word of mouth and social media.