Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

Strategic Challenges to Biodiversity Implementation in BrecklandIn this section strategic challenges facing conservation management in Breckland are identified.Congruence of SSSI designation with priority sitesThe Biodiversity Audit is not able to examine whether the designated sites are concurrent with thedistribution of priority species, as monitoring and survey has been biased strongly towardsdesignated sites. However, it is likely that important localities exist on farmland and waysides.SSSIs and Common Standards MonitoringThere are cases where the requirements for measurable targets have produced institutionalmechanisms that could potentially damage, rather than assist, the original nature conservationvalues for which a site may have been designated. Natural England has developed a system of settingconservation objectives and condition monitoring to maintain a focus on appropriate managementfor the SSSI notified features.However, it is clear that:a) The notified features need to properly represent the conservation interest of a site.b) The conservation objectives need to properly represent the requirements of priority speciesknown or assumed to be present, or capable of being present with changes in management.c) The system of condition monitoring needs to be adequately tailored to detect change againstthose revised conservation objectives.It is likely that early approaches to the notification of SSSIs was carried out with regard to a holisticand integrative sense of the nature value of species assemblages present at sites, with the presenceand subjective quality of the habitats present being taken as a proxy for the likely biodiversity theywould support. This is apparent in the site descriptions presented in the Nature Conservation Review(Ratcliffe 1977), that underpinned much of the initial prioritisation of sites for notification. Biologicalcriteria for selection of SSSIs were made clearer and explicit with the introduction of the 1981Wildlife and Countryside Act, with existing sites subsequently re-notified. However, it is likely thatnotifiable features listed in the criteria sheet that formed part of the notification package oftenserved as a justification for the wider nature value recognised at a site and may have been usedimplicitly as proxies for a wider suite of important biodiversity that was otherwise difficult toquantify, or where data was lacking at the time of notification.Of the priority species for Breckland conservation identified by this Audit: 208 are flowering plants, of which 140 are RDB. 1,636 are invertebrates, of which 287 are RDB.Of the 55 SSSIs that lie within the Breckland NCA, and excluding two woodland sites, one river andtwo sites designated primarily for their aggregations of breeding or non-breeding birds, we haveanalysed the notified features of the remaining 50 SSSI (see Table 4): 49 (98%) have been designated for a vascular plant attribute.Of these:o 44 have plant community as a notified feature.o 20 have a plant species assemblage as a notified feature.o 9 have named RDB or Schedule 8 plant species as a notified feature.185