This dataset was created to support the article titled "Finding common ground in commercial forests: sheep grazing, timber production, and carnivore fences". We sampled clearcuts of regenerating spruce 29 July - 29 August 2024 in Inland and Trøndelag counties, Norway.

Sheep grazing has the potential for positive impacts on commercial forestry through weeding competing plants, or to be detrimental if browsing and trampling levels are high. In some regions of Norway, large, forested areas are fenced to minimize depredation risk from recovering carnivore populations on unsupervised sheep, but fences may alter the behavior of sheep leading to differential effects inside and outside of these fences. We examined terminal leader growth of regenerating Norway spruce (Picea abies) and found that growth decreased with increasing grazing intensity inside fences, whereas growth increased with grazing intensity outside. Sheep grazing in our study had a positive effect on spruce sapling growth form, measured by a decrease in height-to-diameter ratio both inside and outside of fences. While less than three percent of saplings were browsed overall, browsing of saplings did increase at higher grazing intensities but trampling was negligible. Our results suggest that sheep grazing is compatible with spruce regeneration and carnivore fencing as negative impacts from increasing amounts of sheep resulting in reduced growth of terminal leaders may have been offset by decreasing height-to-diameter ratios with more sheep. Lower height-to-diameter ratios suggest more resilient saplings that could make them more resilient to stressors such as heavy snow load. However, if sheep are allowed to reach high grazing intensities, this balance may not be achieved as browsing increases. With increasing demands on forested landscapes, integrating sheep grazing in carnivore-resistant fences on commercial forests presents an opportunity for multiple-use land management with minimal associated trade-offs.