It’s Britain’s baddest woodland. Two hundred acres of bluebell-infested forest so naughty that the Woodland Trust has taken the rare step of shutting it down until it improves.
Uffmoor Wood, near Halesowen in the West Midlands, is padlocked as of today, after becoming a focal point for sheep-worrying, dirt bike scrambling, dog fouling, drug peddling and sex dogging.
On the Woodland Trust’s page for Uffmoor, visitors expressed mixed emotions. Some were mystified. Others less so. “I have seen many DISGUSTING sights,” pointed out regular walker Beverley Challinor. “The worst being in October 2013.”
“Who DO these men think they are fooling,” she went on. “In the layby in their suits and pristine shoes?”
The Farmers’ Guardian also reported several incidents where sheep on neighbouring lands had been attacked.
Hollie Anderson of the Woodland Trust points out that closing a Trust property is unprecedented. “It’s escalated over the years. It’s a very sad case, but we think necessary.”
The forest is one of the more urban sites in the trust’s portfolio. But Anderson doesn’t believe it’s the geography alone that is fuelling the bad behaviour.
“We’ve owned Uffmoor since the 1980s and it’s only since the 2000s that it’s got really bad. It seems to have something to do with the rise of the internet and social media. I think it is listed in some site somewhere, but I don’t want to ruin my browser history.”
There are no public rights of way across Uffmoor, allowing the wood’s gates to be padlocked until further notice. Anderson visited on a monitoring expedition just the other day. “I saw six cars pull in, and then turn round, do a U-turn, because we had a camera.”
She points to walkers being knocked to the ground by antisocial dog owners, and to broader safety issues that means they would now prefer wardens to patrol in groups of two or more.
At least Uffmoor can draw consolation from the fact that it is not alone. Stapleford Wood in Lincolnshire was visited by up to 40 cars a day. In Livingston, pyromaniacs have been setting fire to trees, while Horrocks Wood in Lancashire had its car parking reduced by half to deter amorous visitations.
