Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

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The case for this is provided by: The large number of conservation priority species in Breckland requiring disturbed butungrazed conditions (e.g. 144 priority species, including 68 RDB species and 29 Brecklandspecialists). Variable quality and unknown delivery on arable cultivated margins. Unimproved soil on grass-heath SSSIs that has not received applications of inorganicnutrients. Many grass-heaths represent long term fallows rather than ancient grassland or heathland(e.g. parts of Thetford Heath, much of STANTA and parts of East Wretham). Potential for buried seedbanks under some grass-heaths of 20 th century origin. There are large expanses of grass-heath that currently provide a low value resource forconservation priority species in Breckland (e.g. Brettenham Heath, Bridgham Heath, STANTA,Lakenheath Warren).Recommendation: Examine the feasibility of applying large-scale cultivation treatments to the moribund andageing grass-heath resource in STANTA, with the aim of rejuvenating brecks that have notbeen cultivated for 68+ years.Targeting Ungrazed ‘Brownfield’ SitesSome key sites for the assemblage of ungrazed and heavily disturbed conditions are essentiallybrownfield sites, such as Maidscross Hill and Red Lodge. The conditions that such sites provide issummarised by criteria elaborated by Buglife for “Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously DevelopedLand”. This comprises complex and heterogeneous post-industrial sites providing:Nutrient poor, stressed and disturbed environments.Loose bare ground with hot microclimates.Early successional communities of annuals, mosses, lichens, ruderals.Short swards.Floristically diverse grassland providing rich nectar sources.A structural variety of succession, including scrub.Spatial variation forming small-scale mosaics.Cheilosia velutina - NotableDiptera – Syrphidae (Hoverfly)A hoverfly occurring in various habitats, frequently calcareous and waste ground, the larvaeare phytophagous on thistle (Carduus or Cirsium), while the adults feed on Umbelliferae. Itrequires the maintenance of open conditions and flower rich conditions. These conditionsare suggested by Falk (1991), to be created by “rotational grazing policies to produce amosaic of vegetation types”, and disturbance “to ensure continuity of pioneer vegetation,perhaps involving rotovation or bulldozing selected parts of a site”. However, hogweed(Heracleum sphondylium) is suggested to be very important and the removal of this speciesby spraying or even by the grazing from local deer populations have resulted in the loss ofthe hoverfly (Ian Rabarts pers. comm.).168
Maidscross Hill is largely overgrown by closed or rank grassland and encroached by scrub. Theremaining open gravel and sand exposures are limited to a small area. The extensive lichen andtherophyte communities on the plateau around the margin of these pits have greatly been reducedin recent decades. There is an urgent need to rejuvenate bare ground, broken turf and ruderal plantcommunities at this site.Recommendation: Ensure that scrub removal, ploughing, turf removal, and creation of steep open exposureswithin pits is carried out at key sites of former gravel working on Maidscross Hill. The status and condition of remaining conservation resource at Red Lodge be examined, andrequired action be taken to ensure continuing conditions for the valuable species of disturbedground.Lightly or Ungrazed, Disturbed Open Space within the Forest LandscapeThe large resource of ungrazed (or lightly grazed by deer and hares) and intermittently disturbed rideand track-way verge within the Thetford Forest landscape, combined with the ruderal vegetation inrestocked plantations, provide opportunities for some dispersive species including scarce Coleoptera(Lin 2005; Bertoncelj 2010), Aranaea (Pedley unpublished data), Hymenoptera and moths. Thepotential of these areas as networks for dispersal are discussed further in the Networks for Resiliencesection.Grazing Susceptible PerennialsThe need to experiment with grazing susceptible perennials and steppe species in the cultivated andarable landscapeIn contrast to the clear evidence that annual plants benefit from cultivation, there is less clearevidence that historically intermittently cultivated habitats were also important to the suite ofperennial species requiring physically disturbed and ungrazed conditions (e.g. field mugwortArtemisia campestris, Spanish catchfly Silene otites). However, it is likely that the practice ofcultivating outfields for just one or two years and then leaving them fallow for long periods (Bailey1989) provided ideal conditions for perennials of low competitive ability to regenerate from theseedbank, establish as adults and seed prolifically for a number of years prior to sward closure.It is therefore likely that populations of short and long- lived perennials may have been dynamic andpersisted with prolific regeneration from large seed banks, despite high mortality of adult plantsduring episodes of ploughing. In 1971 Eric Duffey observed 40 plants of Silene otites growing acrossthe northern part of Foxhole heath, despite this part of the heath being ploughed when he workedthere during the mid 1950s. Similarly, plant lists made in 1950 and 1953 for Codson Hill include Sileneotites and this area was thought to have been arable previously (Tansley and Watt, undated).The relict distribution of some long lived perennial species such as Spanish catchfly Silene otites, andgrape hyacinth Muscari neglectum, which are often restricted to grass strips alongside arable fields(including road verges and banks), is strongly suggestive of them having once been common withinthe intermittently cultivated arable fields themselves. However, there are a number of alternative169
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Securing Biodiversityin BrecklandGu
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Commissioning GroupNeil Featherston
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Wind-blown sand guild .............
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milder winters and increased winter
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Creating broad ruderal and disturbe
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Introduction“Few of the lowland d
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Inland DunesThe 1km wide dune and b
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Following the Black Death of the mi
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The area of grass-heath declined by
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PingosPingos are ground water fed p
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Breckland Conservation and the Need
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SSSI. The Breckland Forest SSSI cit
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The Breckland Biodiversity Audit ha
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The Breckland bio-geographic region
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polygons of alternating calcareous
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quality calcareous fen communities
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Figure 2. The extent of Breckland,
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Table 3. Grass-heath vegetation in
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The Conservation Resource: Designat
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All other SSSIs are less than 600 h
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GrasslandHeathWoodlandWetlandFlowin
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Calcicolous grasslandsShingle, stra
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Figure 4. Location of designated si
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Figure 6. Location of Plantlife’s
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Figure 7. Locations of stations in
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Scheme for Stilt & Stalk Flies, Dra
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Table 6. Rare vascular plant specie
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Recommendation BTO be commissioned
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Table 7. Species for which records
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Table 8. Descriptions of Red Data B
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If the sub-species was designated b
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Collating and Synthesising Species
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Table 11. Published, documentary an
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Baron de Worms, C.G.M. (1953) Colle
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Guild AnalysisA number of habitat a
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The specific questions for the work
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Findings of the Breckland Biodivers
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Recording Effort and CoverageThere
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Butterfly Conservation (Suffolk) 17
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Norfolk Biodiversity InformationSer
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Figure 11. Number of taxonomic grou
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difference is partly attributable t
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There were Breckland specialist spe
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Figure 13. Proportion of Breckland
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Distribution of Breckland Conservat
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Figure 15. Number of Breckland cons
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Evidence of Climatic Change: Long-T
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Figure 17. Total seasonal precipita
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Biodiversity Implications of the Ch
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Ariel depositions to agricultural s
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the status of Deschampsia flexuosa.
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The relative effects of ploughing,
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Trends in Species Status: Extinctio
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HymenopteraHymenopteraHymenopteraCo
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In addition to the loss of rare lic
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edstraw Galium parisiense (Tansley
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The relative extent of lichen rich
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The Feasibility and Usefulness of t
Page 117 and 118: Across patch arrangementLandscape c
Page 119 and 120: Across patcharrangementJuxtapositio
Page 121 and 122: Delivery of Multiple Species by Int
Page 123 and 124: Figure 24. Number of Breckland cons
Page 125 and 126: Mechanical disturbance to create br
Page 129 and 130: estricted to road verges, with the
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Page 133 and 134: Records of species from this guild
Page 135 and 136: © Jeremy Earlywww.natureconservati
Page 139 and 140: Open with sward mosaics guildChryso
Page 141 and 142: Grazing without physical disturbanc
Page 143 and 144: Deadwood in an open-woodland ecoton
Page 145 and 146: Specific Requirement in a Variety o
Page 147 and 148: Management to Sustain Dry Terrestri
Page 149 and 150: Heather should rather be considered
Page 151 and 152: GrazingrequirementsLightly sheep-gr
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Page 155 and 156: Wind-blown sandThere is great uncer
Page 157 and 158: IntensityProcess Technique Immediat
Page 159 and 160: Complex Sward MosaicsComplex sward
Page 161 and 162: Management for Assemblages of Light
Page 163 and 164: Management for Species of Physicall
Page 165 and 166: Key Recommendations for Cultivated
Page 167: Shallow cultivation is preferable t
Page 171 and 172: Ecological Requirements of Wetland
Page 173 and 174: numbers of conservation priority sp
Page 175 and 176: Recommendation Requirements of wetl
Page 179 and 180: Restored pingo complexAt Great Hock
Page 183 and 184: the difficulties of achieving this
Page 185 and 186: Strategic Challenges to Biodiversit
Page 187 and 188: Table 22. Problems arising from poo
Page 189 and 190: Recommendation: Natural England and
Page 191 and 192: It is therefore vital to carefully
Page 193 and 194: Creating networks for resilienceTo
Page 195 and 196: More ambitious possibilities that c
Page 197 and 198: Figure 34. Example of a potential c
Page 199 and 200: Connectivity networks© Neal Armour
Page 201 and 202: and consider whether these repeated
Page 203 and 204: Ensure that scrub removal, ploughin
Page 205 and 206: ReferencesADAS. (1997) Biological M
Page 207 and 208: Haes, E. C. M. & Harding, P. T. (19
Page 209 and 210: Sastre, B.(2003). Ground spider com
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Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

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