Wood-pastures are multi-functional habitats that uphold high ecological and cultural values. However, they are currently declining in Europe as a result of land use changes, modulated by agricultural intensification or abandonment. Large herbivores may be utilized for wood-pasture restoration and management. To test whether Gotland ponies could serve as tool for wood-pasture restoration, a three year field experiment with paired control (herbivore exclusion) and experimental plots was applied at three different 10 ha wood-pasture enclosures replicates, where four one year old stallions were introduced per enclosure. We tested whether browsing had an effect on the forest structure by comparing tree height/diameter ratios in experimental (grazed) and controls and, and on the forest composition, and therefore quantified 1) browsing pressure estimates, 2) tree consumption estimates and 3) tree selectivity estimates that ultimately conform a management “tool-kit” for wood-pasture restoration and management. In grassland dominated areas, we used community-weighted means of plant functional traits to elucidate plant community changes induced by grazing and abandonment (ungrazed) conditions. We tested for plant-insect co-dependent functional traits to investigate the response on insect pollinated plants and the subsequent effects on habitat utilization of butterfly and bumble bee communities. The grassland community exerted a mixed tolerance-avoidance response to grazing. This resulted in a gradual change of the community composition which favored prostrate plant species (low plant height at maturity, H) with high specific leaf area (SLA), characteristic of ruderal (R) communities. Plant species richness was significantly higher in grazed compared to ungrazed plots. Butterfly and bumble bee species richness and feeding-resting activities were higher in grazed areas, except for butterfly feeding where no significant effect was found; this was also true for the number of generalist and specialist butterfly species. We found a positive relation between pollinator species richness and feeding activities, and plant species richness. The abandonment of semi-natural grasslands can have rapid pernicious effects on plant species richness and composition and consequent effects on pollinator communities. Thus, the re-introduction of large herbivores may offset the general rapid biodiversity decline in agricultural landscapes by maintaining important functional links between plants and pollinators in grassland ecosystems. Urgent solutions to be found to tackle wood-pasture abandonment and biodiversity losses of semi-natural grasslands for our increasingly abandoned European agricultural landscapes.