A popular nature park was trampled by overuse. Dogs came to the rescue.

Dogs are not allowed off leash at a popular hiking and dog walking spot called the Nature Reserve in Lewes, England. Many of the park’s native wildflowers and grasses had disappeared after decades of use, leaving it sparse and overly trodden.

“It was a degraded woodland,” said Dylan Walker, a wildlife manager in Lewes. “We weren’t seeing any plants coming up. People were loving our urban nature reserve to death.”

So dog owners were surprised in March when they saw an unusual offer: They could bring in their dogs and let them run free in the reserve, as long as the pups would wear backpacks while frolicking. The backpacks would be filled with seed mix to help reseed the ground.

The Lewes Railway Land Wildlife Trust decided that using dogs would be a simple way to scatter native wildflower and grass seeds from the backpacks, which had small holes in them. As the dogs raced around and played, the seeds would drop from the backpacks in areas that humans couldn’t easily reach on the 25-acre reserve, said Walker.

About a dozen pups were set loose on the job, he said.

Five months later, people in the Lewes area are beginning to see the dogs’ efforts blossom. Small green shoots are appearing all over the forest floor, said Walker, who oversaw the project.

“We’re seeing some early germination, and next year, we’ll see some flowering,” he said. “We couldn’t be more pleased. Our plant life is coming back.”

Barbara Haydon was among the dog owners who came to the park to help with the effort. She put backpacks supplied by the reserve on her three golden retrievers named Frida, Lille Venn and Gracie, and set them free to race around the woodland and chase each other.

“It was a wonderful experience to see the dogs doing something so useful for the environment, just by being themselves,” Haydon said. “They enjoyed it immensely, and so did their human companions.”

The Lewes woodland was part of an old railway yard that had been reclaimed by nature, said Walker, 51. The wildlife trust was founded in 1988 to help restore the site in the heart of Lewes, next to the meandering River Ouse.

“For ages, we’d been thinking of ways to bring the area back to life in a way that would involve the community,” he said. “We hoped that everyone could be a part of the story.”

“We wanted a way to quickly supercharge the entire site and restore it to a healthy woodland so animals and insects could thrive again,” added Helen Meade, CEO of the Railway Land Wildlife Trust. “We also wanted to do something that would spark people’s imaginations.”

She and Walker heard about the idea of using dogs to scatter plant seeds earlier this year.

Walker said he’d seen a story about two sisters in Chile who had used their three dogs to scatter seeds in areas devastated by wildfires. They’d cut small holes in doggy backpacks so seed mix would be distributed wherever their pups ran.

“We looked at that and thought it was a brilliant idea,” Walker said. “We also thought it was a good way to share how wolves once roamed around the U.K. and picked up seeds on their fur, which were then dropped in other places.”

Wolves were hunted to extinction in the U.K. and disappeared in the 18th century, he said.

“In one night, a wolf might have traveled 20 to 80 miles and formed new plant colonies along the way,” Walker said. “I thought we could tell that story and get our local dog walkers involved in the project.”

This spring, the Railway Land Wildlife Trust put the word out on Facebook:

“Could your dog channel its inner wolf and help us rejuvenate part of the Railway Land?” the group posted. “As part of our new ‘Walking in the footsteps of Wolves’ project we’re looking for 5 dog owners able to help us spread wildflower seed in a denuded wooded area using specially designed Doggie Saddle Bags!”

“The idea is to mimic the effects of wolves and other large animals that once roamed our countryside, carrying seeds in their fur and spreading them far and wide,” the post continued, with instructions for people to show up with their dogs to try out the backpacks.

When a dozen dogs and their owners showed up, they all were selected for the job, and the BBC covered their efforts.

“It was a great pleasure to watch the dogs running around, especially in out-of-reach places that we couldn’t get into,” he said. “The dogs covered four times the distance that a human walker could do.”

Cressida Murray said she signed up because she thought the vegetation project was a good fit for her energetic cocker spaniel, Bertie.

“I was asked to place a harness (on Bertie), and he ran around spreading seeds like wolves used to do so many years ago,” she said. “I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it.”

The restoration project was a fun way to allow dogs to run off leash, Walker said.

“It was so successful that we’re going to try it again this fall, and we hope to keep it going for a couple of years,” he said.

“Here in the U.K., we have a lot of dog walkers, and there are challenges in protected areas if dogs go off leash and spread (seeds from) invasive species,” Walker added. “Now we have a positive way for dogs and their owners to be the stars and contribute to nature.”