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Special places for wildlife |
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| The County Wildlife Sites system: wiggly lines on maps, a coded filing system and computers churning out information; it sounds dull and seems far removed from our wildlife heritage. However, the system is an important and valuable "tool" that underpins many aspects of our conservation work. Victoria Whitehouse explains further.... | |||
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Outside
of statutorily protected sites (Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Special
Areas of Conservation), County Wildlife Sites are Cornwall's most important areas
for biodiversity. There are around 350 of them, covering eight per cent of the
land area (30,000 hectares), which contain the full array of Cornish habitats
from coastal cliffs and heaths to inland moors, wetlands and ancient woodlands. The County Wildlife Sites system was established by the Trust in the early 1980s. It is the mechanism by which the Trust designates sites and stores site data. Site boundaries are held on a Geographical Information System (GIS), while site data are held in paper format and species records are stored on a computer database. The system is managed by ERCCIS, hosted by the Trust. The Trust's use of the County Wildlife Sites system has facilitated several landmark achievements for wildlife protection in Cornwall. For example, at Newlyn Downs the Trust objected to the development of the site as a waste transfer and recycling station because it was a County Wildlife Site and further surveys showed that it was the best Dorset-heath-dominated heathland in the county. The development did not go ahead and the area has now been afforded statutory protection - and recognition of its Europe-wide significance - as a Special Area of Conservation. Now one of the Trust's flagship nature reserves, Cabilla and Redrice Woods, an ancient semi-natural woodland, was under threat from inappropriate planting |
with
coniferous trees. Its designation as a County Wildlife Site helped the Trust prevent
this damaging activity. A few years later, the Trust was able to purchase this
wonderful site as a nature reserve. Through providing a focus for our nature conservation activities, the County Wildlife Sites system was invaluable in developing and implementing a major conservation advisory project - the Dorset Heath Project. This used the system to identify areas of internationally important heathland supporting the rare Dorset heath plant. A countryside adviser was employed to advise County Wildlife Site owners in the target area. This resulted in the establishment of long-term sustainable management programmes for these sites and provision of funding to landowners for this work through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme. With major achievements such as this the Trust should be proud of its system for the protection of Cornwall's Wildlife Sites but, as is often the case, more must still be done. To ensure that our advisory and policy work continues to be effective, the system should be regularly updated, sites should be re-surveyed and our data management systems must be adequate. Of course this means more lines on maps, more computers crunching data and more time spent indoors feeding the data to the computers. However, when the benefits are real and significant for Cornwall's wildlife this is surely a task worth continuing. Victoria Whitehouse |
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