Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

In a nutshell, it is the assemblages of priority species for Breckland conservation known or assumedto be present that should be the objective of conservation efforts, not the vegetation community inwhich they are believed to live. Vegetation is a fundamental vehicle for biodiversity delivery, but it isthe priority species, including priority plant species, that should be the objective. There has been toomuch preoccupation with the presence of NVC types as an end point, rather than either their qualityor value as an indicator of ecological condition and the potential of a site to support key species.Both Common Standards Monitoring (condition assessment) and Higher Level Stewardshipprescriptions can encourage a static approach to management. This is counter to the known dynamichistory of Breckland historic land-use, habitats, vegetation and species assemblages. It is also counterto the management interventions that are required to create suitable conditions for priorityassemblages, which cannot be provided by a status quo, attempting to hold conditions static or toarrest succession.Recommendations: Consideration should be given to revisit notification criteria for designated sites, particularlythose now known to hold significant invertebrate assemblages. It would be useful to explicitlyrelate these interest features to the conditions and processes required to sustain them. Conservation objectives should be specifically tailored to reflect the requirements of priorityspecies known or assumed to be present, or capable of being present with changes inmanagement, in light of what is now known about the requirements for priority species inBreckland. For Common Standards Monitoring, condition assessment criteria for NVC plant communitiesshould be revised, and localised, to reflect the conditions and processes required by keyassemblages of priority Breckland species. A small percentage of heather, including seedlings and pioneer heather or the appropriateconditions for their regeneration should be considered sufficient qualification of theEuropean feature (i.e. heather heathland, or H1 community of NVC) to be in appropriatecondition.Ground Disturbance RegimesA further set of institutional challenges arise through the management of uncertainty and change, forexample, where the potential outcomes of disturbance treatments are unknown. Objectives andcriteria for measuring success need to be rigorous, but flexible enough to allow a range of contrastingresults.Conflicts between conservation and archaeological interestsPotential conflicts between conservation land management and archaeological interests need to beresolved without requiring a separate impact assessment for each operation and site.188