Devon Biodiversity Record Centre

Green Minds – DWT/Plymouth City Council

Following on from several recent community based green space initiatives by the city council and DWT, this European funded project will be working within a new, wider partnership. It aims to breathe new life into a number of community spaces, ranging from traditional parks to strategic green corridors, increasing peoples enjoyment, and understanding of the nature benefits good management with local input can bring. DBRC will be monitoring sites, alongside citizen science elements developed with local residents. Training and mentoring will enable interested individuals and groups to be supported in learning about species and habitats, and how they can be protected and have increased resilience into the future.

Tamara Landscape Partnership project

As one of the founding partners, DBRC is currently supporting the Tamar AONB hosted project team, and other partners to complete a stage 1 development phase. This is funded through NHLF and offers the partnership the opportunity to work up a much larger bid, by creating evidence, and community consultation to shape it. Whilst highly competitive, these funding sources are critical to allow larger, longer-term projects such as landscape partnerships to exist. Critically this fund actively promotes an inclusive approach, and we are therefore able to focus on important farming and land management challenges, alongside flooding, access, enjoyment of the landscape, its increased resilience, and nature, alongside the historic environment, local businesses and traditional micro initiatives such as Tamar Grow Local, which seek to create jobs and investment in the Tamar Valley by harnessing just one of the valleys long-established, but often undervalued strengths.

Ancient Woodland Inventory Review

As part of a national initiative driven by The Woodland Trust and Natural England, DBRC has formed a large county partnership to fund this review in Devon. The existing inventory managed by NE is over 30years old and has limitations associated with hand mapping pre GIS, and current technology. The historical threshold of including sites over 2ha is also becoming more of an issue in relation to modern planning and conservation needs. Devon is a historic landscape which has seen many areas of woodland fragmented by development, and changes in land use/land management, and there is poor representation on the inventory of the county’s many smaller but highly important sites – leaving them potentially vulnerable to threats in coming years. Using the latest datasets and technology, alongside robust historical evidence, over the next three years DBRC will review many thousands of aerial photo images, maps and text from archives, to complete this project. There will be opportunities for volunteers to assist in some elements, and as ancient woodland has deep connections with ancient folklore and the historical environment, this project may appeal to a wider audience. For example, place names can be associated with landscape features such as historical woods and treescapes. Communities where these woods and the special quality they can bring are valued, will be able to help ground-truth the new map being developed and ensure sites are correctly represented on it. This will increase the ability of the AWI to protect this natural and irreplaceable asset for future generations.

Connecting the culm Project – Blackdown Hills AONB

Over the next three years, DBRC is leading on the biodiversity monitoring elements of this project, ensuring that the direction of travel post-intervention on target sites can be measured. The project aims to work with communities and stakeholders within the catchment to identify and define a range of nature-based solutions which can increase the flood resilience of those areas. Protecting housing and infrastructure as well as people, as we move forward in an uncertain climate change scenario. The catchment rolls downhill from the mire habitats at the top of the Blackdown Hills, through mid-Devon and into the National Trust Killerton Estate, where flat grassland rich agricultural land prevails. DBRC will train and support volunteers involved in surveying these habitats, and a range of indicator species which provide intel on their condition and functionality. We will measure carbon capture through an international citizen science project, feeding into a wider global project, and support partners in designing a legacy which includes upskilling those communities, making them more able to participate in future schemes.

Devon Nature Recovery Networks

DBRC are currently leading the technical development of an NRN for Devon, alongside its host DWT and major partners including DCC, EA, and a range of other stakeholders. Since their inclusion within the DEFRA 25 year plan, NRNs have been the subject of much debate. In counties where Ecological Network mapping has already taken place, they may be a lower priority, but in the absence of an existing model here, we have decided to pilot an initial approach. This will be the first attempt nationally to translate thinking into a physical mapping tool, and we are currently testing an approach within the Tamara Landscape Partnership project which importantly also has cross border elements, which will add value. As we are in the early stages of this pilot, we expect to add to this page early in the spring…………..

Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve vegetation mapping

In 2019 DBRC were commissioned by Teignbridge District Council to undertake a vegetation survey and rare plant species monitoring work which manages part of this internationally important wildlife site. The sand spit is subject to a unique set of pressures arising from the combination of natural coastal processes and high visitor numbers. In 2017, under the Dawlish Warren Beach Management Scheme (DWBMS) much of the hard engineering was removed from the sand dune system and a ‘beach recharge’ undertaken in order to allow parts of the site to function in a more naturally dynamic way. This survey will address the need to gain a better understanding about changes in distribution of important species and habitats on site. Some such changes are part and parcel of a dynamic dune system and others – both positive and negative – are the result of impacts from recreational use. There are rare species present at Dawlish Warren which depend upon a certain level of trampling to maintain the right habitat conditions and others that are sensitive to the impacts of erosion and nutrient enrichment. This survey will act as a baseline following the DWBMS and identify human impacts on habitats and key botanical species.

Links

Contacts

Address: Devon Biodiversity Records Centre,
Unit 2, Aldens Business Court,
7a Chudleigh Road,
Alphington,
Exeter, EX2 8TS

DBRC is hosted by Devon Wildlife Trust registered charity NO.213224

FRIENDS OF SOUTH HAMS

This Web site is for those who love the South Hams “The jewel in the crown of Devon” and who wish to protect and enhance the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.