Back to the future: restoring threatened metapopulations on the Lizard Peninsula – update, August 2024

A progress update on The Lizard’s Species Recovery Programme-funded project

Following our busy winter period of habitat management work across the west of the Lizard, we learnt in March 2024 that we had been successfully awarded Species Recovery Programme (SRP) funding to continue our Back to the Future Lizard SRP Project into a second year. This funding will allow us to expand the habitat management work for our 34 rare and threatened species into new areas within central and east Lizard, including Goonhilly Downs, Gwenter and Crousa Downs, as well as continuing management works within Gew Graze, Kynance North Valley and Lizard Downs in west Lizard. It will also fund the monitoring of the work we undertook lastt winter to ensure that it has benefitted our target species, allowing us to learn from the results. Habitat restoration work has already resulted in up to 100,000 plants of Pale Dog-violet Viola lactea, an Endangered Species, in an area identified by the project in February 2023 – possibly the largest extant colony in the UK.

Heathland area: before (November 2023) and after (June 2024) a burn, encouraging the cattle into new areas and opening up more bare ground for our rare plants to thrive (Photos: Sarah Board)

One of the restored ponds: before (June 2023) and after (June 2024), to create suitable conditions for species such as Pillwort Pilularia globulifera and Three-lobed Crowfoot Ranunculus tripartitus (Photos: Sarah Board)

Natural England, in collaboration with two of our graziers, have also been trialling ‘Nofence’ grazing technology systems. Over the winter, the Nofence collars were trialled on both cattle and goats within the confines of a farm environment. Now that the stock has got used to the system, the animals have been moved out to graze areas within Lizard Downs and Kynance North Valley. This will enable us to target animals within specific areas requiring grazing without erecting fences across the landscape. Look out for the goats in Kynance North Valley!

Goats, sporting their collars, within Kynance North Valley (photo: Ed O’Connor)

We have also started to undertake research into heathland management focusing on lowland heathland and more specifically past management of The Lizard’s heathlands. We have begun by reviewing information gained from literature, research papers and local archives, and by interviewing local land managers, including farming families and those with generational links to agricultural practices and heathland management. The aim is to use all this information to review our current conservation practices, including the use of controlled burns as a means to manage heathland – we recognise a growing public concern for wildlife, climate change, carbon dioxide reduction and a growing tourism load attracted by the very landscape enjoyed for many generations.

For further information, please contact Sarah Board, Project Manager for the Natural England Lizard SRP Project (Sarah.Board@naturalengland.org.uk)


Posted

in

by