Scrub and burrowing animals on a scheduled monument

Scheduled monument scrub management is one of the few areas of heritage law where doing nothing and doing something can both be unlawful. Letting scrub colonise an earthwork damages it. Grubbing the scrub out without consent is an offence. Clearing a rabbit warren off a barrow may need consent too, and if badgers have moved in, removing them needs a licence from a different regulator under a different Act.

For a landowner with a scheduled monument in a field, the practical answer is almost always a managed programme agreed with Historic England rather than a one-off clearance. The law is set up to encourage exactly that.

Why vegetation and animals cause damage

Scrub damages earthworks in three ways. Roots penetrate and disrupt the stratified deposits that give the monument its archaeological value. Wind throws mature scrub and small trees, and the root plate lifts a bowl of soil and archaeology with it. And dense cover prevents anyone seeing the monument, which means damage goes unrecorded for years.

Burrowing animals do something different and often worse. A rabbit warren in the loose soil of a bank or a barrow mound tunnels through the archaeology, ejects artefacts and dating evidence as spoil, and destabilises the profile so that erosion accelerates. Badger setts are larger, deeper and harder to deal with. Moles cause steady low-level attrition that is easy to ignore until the surface is a mass of hills.

The common factor is that the loose, well-drained, raised soil that makes a good earthwork also makes good digging. Monuments are attractive to burrowing animals for structural reasons, so the problem recurs rather than resolving.

What counts as works needing consent

Section 2 of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 makes it an offence to carry out works to a scheduled monument without scheduled monument consent. The definition of works is broad: demolition, destruction, damage, removal, repair, alteration, addition, flooding or tipping.

Applied to vegetation and animals, the distinction that matters is ground disturbance.

• Cutting scrub at ground level and treating the stumps chemically normally involves no ground disturbance and is usually acceptable without consent, though it should still be discussed first.
• Grubbing out roots, winching out stumps or using a machine to clear is ground disturbance and needs consent.
• Installing fence posts, gates, water troughs or stock feeders within the scheduled area is ground disturbance and needs consent.
• Infilling burrows with soil or other material is tipping and needs consent.
• Removing a badger sett involves excavation and needs consent as well as a species licence.

Separate class consents exist for certain routine agricultural operations, but they are narrower than people assume: they generally apply only where work of the same kind has been carried out recently and they exclude operations such as subsoiling, drainage and tree planting. Works urgently necessary for safety or health have their own class consent, which has to be reported afterwards rather than used as a general excuse.

Scheduled monument consent is granted by the Secretary of State on the advice of Historic England, and the application goes to Historic England. It is not a planning application and the local planning authority does not determine it.

Management agreements and advice

Section 17 of the 1979 Act allows a management agreement to be made with the owner or occupier for the management of an ancient monument. That is the mechanism to aim for, because it converts a series of individual consent applications into an agreed programme.

An agreement typically sets out the management objectives, the operations permitted and their timing, the monitoring arrangements, and any contribution to costs. It gives the landowner certainty about what can be done each year without a fresh application, which for scrub and burrow management is the whole point.

Before that, ask for advice. Historic England's regional teams advise on monument management, and monuments suffering from scrub or burrowing animals are the kind of asset recorded on the Heritage at Risk register. An approach that starts with advice and leads to an agreement attracts a different reception from one that starts with a retrospective consent application.

A heritage significance assessment of the monument, setting out what gives it value and what the vegetation and burrows are harming, is useful supporting material for either route.

Protected species conflicts

This is where management programmes come unstuck. Three statutory regimes commonly collide with monument management.

Badgers are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, which makes it an offence to damage, destroy or obstruct access to a sett, or to disturb a badger occupying one. Works affecting a sett require a licence from Natural England, and heritage damage can form part of the case for one. Expect the licence process to take time and to be subject to a closed season.

Nesting birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, so scrub clearance has to avoid the breeding season, broadly March to August, or be preceded by a check by a competent ecologist.

Reptiles are protected against killing and injuring, and dense scrub on a well-drained earthwork is good reptile habitat. A clearance programme on a south-facing bank may need a reptile presence check and a phased clearance method.

A Preliminary Ecological Appraisal is the right first step where any of these is plausible. Where a protected species is confirmed, a Protected Species Survey and any mitigation licence require a suitably licensed ecologist under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, and an AI-assisted draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with Historic England, Natural England or a qualified professional before relying on it.

Grazing as a management tool

Short grass sward is the ideal condition for most earthwork monuments, and grazing is the usual way to maintain it. It suppresses scrub regeneration, keeps the monument visible and avoids the ground disturbance that mechanical management brings.

Four decisions determine whether grazing helps or harms.

1. Stock type. Sheep are the usual choice on earthworks because they are light and selective. Cattle are heavier and poach soft ground, which on a steep bank causes erosion scars.
2. Stocking density and timing. Overgrazing in wet conditions produces bare ground that then erodes, and the damage concentrates on the steepest slopes.
3. Infrastructure position. Troughs, feeders, gates and tracks concentrate animals, so they belong outside the scheduled area. Placing them within it needs consent and will usually be refused.
4. Supplementary feeding. Feeding on a monument creates poaching and nutrient enrichment, which encourages coarse grasses and then scrub.

An illustrative example

A late prehistoric round barrow in permanent pasture carries dense blackthorn scrub across two thirds of the mound and an active rabbit warren on its southern flank. The agreed programme cuts the scrub in two winter phases at ground level with stump treatment, leaves the root systems in place, and installs rabbit netting on a line outside the scheduled area with hand-dug post holes recorded archaeologically. Badger presence is checked before each phase. Grazing is reinstated with sheep at a low density from the second year. This example is illustrative rather than a real agreement.

Recording damage before works

Record the monument before anything changes, for three reasons: it demonstrates the condition that justifies the consent application, it provides a baseline for monitoring, and it captures information that the works themselves may remove.

The record should include photographs from fixed, marked positions that can be repeated in later years, a measured survey of the earthwork at a scale appropriate to its form, a plan of burrow entrances and scrub extent, and notes on erosion scars and bare ground. Where resources allow, photogrammetry or laser scanning produces a surface model that makes year-on-year change measurable rather than impressionistic.

Historic mapping is also worth consulting, because it shows when scrub arrived and how the land use around the monument changed. The techniques for using historic maps in an assessment apply to monument condition as much as to development sites.

Funding routes

Agri-environment schemes in England have long included options for the management of historic and archaeological features on farmland, covering scrub control, grazing management and the exclusion of damaging operations. Historic England also offers grants in defined circumstances, particularly for monuments on the Heritage at Risk register.

The schemes and their option codes change, and the transition between agri-environment arrangements has been continuing for several years. As at October 2026, check the current scheme and the options available on gov.uk rather than relying on an older adviser's note, and ask Historic England what is available for a monument in your circumstances.

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