Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

Creating networks for resilienceTo reduce biodiversity losses from existing sites and to allow restoration and resilience ofpopulations for the longer term, opportunities should be taken to Restore and ensure continuity of appropriate conditions within remaining sites. Consolidate adjacent sites into larger contiguous integrated units for management acrossland-ownership boundaries. This will increase the potential size and resilience of speciespopulations, particularly of highly specialist species. Buffer and expand existing sites, where possible, so that conditions and populations aremore likely to be sustained within them. Buffering of some heathland sites has beenachieved, for example at Weeting and Cranwich and this approach should be extended wherepossible. Develop connectivity networks to enhance the resilience of sites and of the biodiversity theyprotect and to provide opportunities for dispersal and recolonisation.This needs a coordinated and integrated strategic approach to conservation planning across sites,rather than just within. It is the latter, intra-site scale which currently dominates conservationactivity.Suggestions are made below on re-uniting fragments that are either immediately adjacent, or locatednearby, and that could potentially be joined into larger contiguous complex units.Example of a potential networkThetford Heath once covered a wide sweep of landscape to the west, south-west and south ofThetford. It is now reduced in extent to Thetford Heaths SSSI, which exists as three potentiallycontiguous units that are under separate ownership and are currently fragmented and isolated byintervening woodland belts (see next page). The units include the unfavourable western unit 1(condition unfavourable no change), the core NNR (the only part currently in favourable condition),and the Eastern unit 3 (Barnham MOD camp in unfavourable recovering condition). By removal ofparts of the screening woodlands, there is potential to integrate these into a single suite ofcontiguous habitat, physically continuous with Barnham Cross Common SSSI (also unfavourablerecovering). Taking advantage of the hard barriers and lack of single grazing regime, areas ofungrazed physically disturbed habitat could be created as linking elements along boundaries. Theneed to retain screening for breeding stone curlew will impose constraints on some boundaries, butit appears that current approaches to management of these sites are considered in isolation andwithout integration.193