Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

In stark contrast to their relative importance amongst the biodiversity, only 13 (26%) have been designated for an invertebrate feature.Of these:o 12 have an invertebrate assemblage as a notified feature.o 2 have a RDB or schedule 8 invertebrate species as a notified feature.Plant communities do provide readily recognisable indicators of ecological processes and conditions.If key plant indicator species or features of site condition (e.g. sward height, bare ground) could bereadily found during a site visit, an intrinsic assumption may be that protecting the site can alsodeliver a suite of associated conservation priority species (mostly invertebrates) for which exhaustivesurvey was not possible or practical, due to constraints of taxonomic expertise, time and cost.Potential problems arise, however, when the objective of management becomes the delivery ofcondition criteria based on the narrow presence of the notified features, rather than the delivery ofpriority biodiversity that implicitly formed the reason for notification in the first place.For example, a site notified for a plant community may still retain the notified feature in some form,even though the structure and ecological processes have dramatically altered, due to a change ingrazing intensity, nutrient supply and the extent of small scale disturbance. Many of the conservationpriority species that were the implicit focus of conservation efforts and designation may actuallydisappear, even though the notified feature is still present.Within Natural England’s Common Standards Monitoring (CSM), the Condition Assessment Criteriafor vegetation communities (e.g. CG7, U1 or H1) were drawn up as broad guidelines. Attention wasgiven to ecological and management processes such as disturbance and grazing, with sward height,extent of bare ground or frequency of ‘undesirable’ species (e.g. ragwort, bracken) as proxies forcondition. Advisers are encouraged to revise these broad guidelines in order to develop criteriatables that can be site-specific or at least guided by local or regional priorities. However, due toconstraints of time and a lack of any clear and explicit bio-geographic objectives, this has not alwayshappened, even on key sites.As a result, the condition of at least some key Breckland SSSIs is assessed by criteria that, if then usedto guide and determine management objectives, would result in damage to the potential biodiversityinterest of the site. These problems are listed in Table 22.186