South Downs wins Heritage Lottery Fund support to reunite heathlands
June 24, 2014
Ambitious plans to restore and reunite areas of rare heathland in the South Downs National Park have received initial support*, including £48,300 development funding, from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to progress the project further. The development funding will help the National Park Authority carry out habitat surveys, build partnerships and get communities excited about their heaths ahead of an application for a full grant to carry out the project.
The Heathlands Reunited project, led by the National Park Authority, aims to create new and improve existing heathland to cover an area greater than 1,200 football pitches. South Downs heaths are not only home to rare plants and animals – such as the sand lizard, woodlark and silver-studded blue butterfly – they are also cherished by local communities as valuable spaces to relax. But heathland covers just one per cent of the South Downs National Park, mostly separated into ‘islands’ where isolated plants and animals are far more vulnerable to local extinction.
Margaret Paren, Chair of the South Downs National Park Authority, said:
“Less than ten per cent of former heathland remains in the South Downs today and what’s left is fragmented, reducing the diversity of plants and animals that make heaths so interesting and scientifically important. The heath at Woolmer Forest, for example, is the only place in England where you can find all twelve of our native reptiles and amphibians – in the future we might even be able to see them spread across the Western Weald part of the National Park.
“Volunteers are already doing amazing conservation work but we want to encourage more communities to get involved, for example by joining together to adopt their local heath or holding events to celebrate its importance and history. Many people don’t know that heathland is actually a landscape created by people and only exists because we have been carrying out grazing, controlled burning and the cutting of birch, heather and bracken for hundreds of years. Our heathlands are under threat and would disappear completely if they weren’t actively managed.”
The five year project will improve the quality and size of heathlands in the South Downs, and create wildlife corridors and ‘stepping stones’, allowing animals to move between them. The project will cover a large area between Woolmer Forest near Liss, and Wiggonholt Common in the east, and from Black Down near Haslemere down to Midhurst Common, with the aim of eventually restoring and re-recreating 460 hectares of heathland.
Jane Cecil, General Manager for the National Trust said:
“This is a good example of where the National Park can bring a variety of organisations together and achieve more as a partnership than we could have done on our own.”
The Heathlands Reunited project will be led by the South Downs National Park Authority, working in partnership with Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust, Butterfly Conservation, Defence Estates (Home Counties), Forestry Commission, Hampshire County Council, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, Sussex Wildlife Trust, National Trust, Natural England, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Lynchmere Society and West Sussex County Council.
Judy Rous, Chairman for the Lynchmere Society, whose land is an important link in the Heathlands United project said:
“We have benefitted in the past from a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund which enabled the Society to buy the Commons and fund the start of heathland restoration which is already showing great results, and thanks to our wonderful volunteers gets better and better each year.
“Taking responsibility for the stewardship of our local heathland and common land sites has helped to generate community involvement, new skills, local products and a sense of enthusiasm and appreciation for the history and environment of the area.”