Forest Enterprise action for heathland

HEATHLAND - A WASTE OF SPACE?

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FOREST ENTERPRISE ACTION FOR HEATHLAND R O D LESLIE

Heaths to Forests Heaths are man-made habitats. They have always been used by man - in fact, it was burning and grazing by early man and his animals that gradually eliminated the woodland that once clothed today's heaths. Romanticised today, heaths in reality must have been awful places in which to live, people on the margins of society scratching a living from thin, unproductive soils. Catching snakes for a living may seem picturesque to us today but can't have been much fun at the time!

From 1919 when the Forestry Commission was established until 1939 employment and the relief of rural poverty played a key part in forest planting - and not just for the Forestry Commission; the Dartmoor Forests of Fernworthy and Bellever were planted by the Prince of Wales' Duchy of Cornwall to provide local employment. Thetford was the biggest heathland project in England.

In 1919 heaths were not a waste of space but an opportunity for something more useful, like trees. Today we live in a very different world: no-one is starving in Breckland or the New Forest and we can value our heaths for their history, sweeping, open scenery and fascinating wildlife. That is why Forest Enterprise is one of the leading organisations ensuring that our heaths and their wildlife don't just survive but grow and thrive as we approach the millennium.

The Forest Enterprise Mission Forest Enterprise is an executive agency of the Forestry Commission. It is the public body responsible for managing Forestry Commission land, the publicly owned national forest estate. Because the Crown Lands of the New Forest are managed by the Forestry Commission, Forest Enterprise manages the largest area of heath land in England.

Forest Enterprise is not just the 'commercial arm' of the Forestry Commission and our remit from Government makes it very clear that environmental conservation is a key part of our mission: "Provide environmental, social and other Outputs: to enhance the environmental conservation and amenity value of the estate including biodiversity and landscape, and to seek and realise opportunities to further the Government's environmental policies."

What we do to achieve these aims is speit out in detail in our business plan: •

Upgrading Computer records for current distribution of endangered habitats including lowland heath.

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Ensuring that current management plans endorsed by English Nature are in place for 85% of all SSSIs which have been notified for more than 12 months.

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Formalising GB and local action plans for native pinewoods and lowland heath for endorsement by conservation agencies.

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(1998)

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These actions all contribute to the Government's national targets for heathland biodiversity: "Maintain, and improve by management, all existing lowland heathland (58,000ha) and produce conditions during the next ten years to begin the process of heathland re-establishment of a further 6,000ha in Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey, Devon, Suffolk and Norfolk. The aims of re-establishment should be: to increase the total heathland area; to increase the heathland patch size to link heathland patches."

And we have already published our Habitat Action Plan for Heathland between 1997 and 2002.

The New Forest With an unbroken history stretching back into the mists of time, the largest area of unbroken heathland left in western Europe and a commoning tradition that is our best link with medieval agriculture the New Forest is an extraordinary and exciting survival from a former age. A Ramsar site, SPA, the largest terrestrial SSSI in England and candidate SAC - no designation can adequately describe this marvellous place. It is also the biggest and longest running conservation project in England - Forest Eneterprise spends over ÂŁ500,000 a year on the 13,237 hectares of heathland.

Grazing by several thousand ponies and cattle are the key to the forest survival. They are owned and managed by commoners under the supervision of the Verderers and their field officers, the Agisters. But over 45 management activities support the animals - from cutting back invading pine to maintaining roadside banks to prevent cars driving on the heath.

Each operation is complex: take burning, for example. Next to grazing it is the most important management, Controlling invasive Vegetation and essential for the regeneration of gorse and heather. It produces fresh young growth for commoners' animals. There is a conflict over how burning is carried out: firstly, scale - the size of burns has been dramatically reduced over the last 15 years from 10.5 to 4.5 hectares: for conservation the smallest possible patch size for habitat diversity is desirable. Older gorse is the key habitat for Dartford Warbiers, so a longer period between burns is preferred. For grazing, patch size is less important but commoners are looking for as much young growth as possible. There is a basic conflict here, but there is also a conflict within the desired conservation objectives in that older gorse may not regenerate satisfactorily after burning.

Dartford numbers have rocketed from the brink of extinction following the 1963 winter. Nightjar are common on these heavily grazed and managed heaths and there are more Woodlark than previously realised. the forest is a stronghold for Smooth Snakes but not for Sand Lizards which may have become extinct and which are being reintroduced from a breeding population at the FC reptiliary at Holidays Hill.

One of the biggest issues is the economic fragility of commoning - not helped by several hundred road deaths of ponies each year. However, the fundamental problem is the car as transport not killer - there simply isn't the demand for the attractive, versatile New Forest ponies which were populär riding animals in days gone by.

Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 34 (1998)

HEATHLAND - A WASTE OF SPACE?

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Dorset Dorset's heaths are different in their biology and the problems they face. In contrast to the New Forest, forest planting was the major cause of heathland loss from 1920-1940, although later agriculture and urban development became far more significant.

Following the development of 40 hectares of conservation sites for rare reptiles, especially Sand Lizards, with the Herpetological Conservation Trust through the 1980s, Forest Enterprise launched a major restoration programme in 1991. Rather than simply Converting areas of forest to heath the Forests and Heathlands project aimed to target key issues so that every bit of conversion counted.

Fragmentation, both between heathland areas and of the habitat sequence from bog through moist to dry heath, is a major issue in Dorset. Trees grow best on the drier heaths which were largely planted, Splitting remaining areas of bog or moist heath from surviving heaths. Morden Bog was almost completely isolated from surrounding heaths until a 300 metre wide link to the Great Ovens SSSI was cut as part of the project. Restoration of links usually restores the habitat sequence by adding significant areas of dry heath to surviving wetter heath. It expands the area of heathland islands within the forest which are often key sites for rare species, especially the reptiles which are especially important in these forests.

Scale is important and we also looked for opportunities to expand the area of surviving heathlands, with the most notable example being the restoration to heath of over half of Whitesheet plantation on the southern border of English Nature managed Holt Heath NNR, adding significantly to one of the largest surviving heaths.

DĂźring the first phase of this project, completed in 1995, over 150 hectares of forest were restored to heathland, significantly more than the original planned area. Most exciting, grazing has just been re-established in a large chunk of Wareham with help for fencing costs from English Nature. The fence encloses forest and heath, and neighbours land to create a sort of ranch within which a small number of cattle wander, providing the low pressure grazing we are looking for.

We also worked with RSPB, benefiting from European funding under the LIFE programme. For the next phase we had already focused on Erica ciliaris, the Dorset Heath, in and around the Purbeck forests, when a consortium led by RSPB won further European funding specifically for this key species and we are delighted that we will again be working closely with our partners on this new work.

East Anglia - Thetford and the Sandlings The Dorset project also links the ephemeral forest habitats created by clear felling through a system of wide ride corridors. The forest itself is the key for two endangered species in Breckland which have also been researched and monitored systematically for nearly 20 years. Recent felled and replanted forest areas are the main habitat of Nightjar and Woodlark in Thetford forest, and are key centres for these species in Britain. Both have declined this Century and

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until work in the 1980s were very poorly known. Thetford forest was the first place where it was possible to demonstrate an actual increase in Nightjar numbers which could at the time have been slipping towards extinction in Britain.

The big problem for both species is that they require the very early stages of heathland, and heaths that look generally well managed may be too heavily vegetated for these birds. Nightjars must have bare soil to nest on and Woodlarks, too, require lightly vegetated habitat which is difficult to reproduce through nature reserve management, although RSPB have shown the way at Minsmere. The shading of a mature tree crop, leaving bare ground after felling, has proved an ideal Substitute habitat.

Nightjars have increased broadly in proportion to available habitat as more and more clearfells become available, rising from 90 in 1974,168 in 1981 and to 318 'churring' males in 1992. There were only 12 other males found elsewhere in Breckland in 1992.

Woodlarks have been rather different: stuck on no more than 50 pairs through the early 1980s, eventually all the Breckland Woodlarks were on forest rather than heathland. However, after 1986 they increased dramatically to 249 in 1995, representing 40% of the known UK population. A few are now returning to the semi-natural heaths.

It would be desirable to have the same wealth of information for other species as we have for these two birds: this hard evidence of success makes it much easier to justify management actions and it has a practical application in that we may now be able to predict for Nightjar at least the populations that different levels of clear felling are likely to produce.

In Thetford, planned felling will provide the sequence of habitat these species need. Our plans for Suffolk were the same until October 1987 when in one night the staggered age class of felling and replanting we were developing was literally blown away. After an initial bonanza the outlook for birds of the early succession was bleak. We could not maintain large areas of suitable habitat because even unplanted with conifer, birch would invade, so we decided to try and maintain 80 hectares to a high Standard. After neglect while there was lots of habitat around we are now bringing these into management to provide the islands to carry Woodlark in particular through the lean years until felling starts again.

Like in Dorset, we have looked carefully at larger scale restoration and are planning major restoration at Thetford, with over 200 hectares expected to return to grazed heath, but plans are still at an early stage.

Across the Country Forest Enterprise manages many other heathland areas, including: •

Crooksbury Common in Surrey, with all the British reptile species (plus Natterjack toads recently re-introduced). It is a northern outpost of the southern Sand Lizard population and heather has been expanded to over half the forest area here over the past 15 years.

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Sherwood, where wide permanent rides provide habitat for Nightjars.

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Haidon in south Devon, with one of the highest densities of Nightjar in the country.

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HEATHLAND - A WASTE OF SPACE?

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Cannock, where widened rides and glades link to the heaths of Cannock Chase and provide habitat for a struggling Nightjar population.

Into the Future The outlook for the heaths managed by Forest Enterprise has never been better: managed within a profitable business by foresters capable of carrying out large scale and complex tasks, there is a real prospect we can maintain these habitats for the special wildlife that depends on them. Money and management are the keys: that is one reason why we have not converted larger areas - we must not create heath only to see it invaded once again by birch or bracken.

So, a waste of space? Foresters who once saw open land simply as a place to put trees wouldn't agree today - surprisingly, we have been amongst the leaders in appreciating this marvellous part of our British landscape and wildlife. There is still much to learn and to do for our heaths but the fact we have been able to first stabilise and then help the recovery of several key species is not just encouraging but against all the trends of the last decades.

Our Heath land Plan is a vision for a brighter future - and we will achieve it.

Rod Leslie Regional Director Forest Enterprise South & West England Region

Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 34

(1998)