Habitat Restoration
Habitat restoration is vital because habitat loss is the single largest cause of the loss of living organisms on earth.
Habitats are the underlying basis of all living communities. Habitats consist of an intricate web of complex interactions between plants and animals and their physical environment. These interactions may have taken hundreds, even thousands, of years to evolve within a particular habitat. Preservation of existing habitats and their complex communities therefore needs to be the top priority in conservation. However, where losses have already occurred, restoration of habitats is the next best option.
Restoration involves re-creating the physical conditions necessary for a particular habitat to exist and then either relying on colonisation from adjacent habitats, or assisting in the process by translocating suitable organisms to the habitat and nurturing their growth. The latter should only be necessary where similar habitats have become too fragmented and isolated from each other to allow re-colonisation.
Restoration is a long-term process which will almost certainly involve continued management of the habitat to maintain suitable conditions.
For details of an on-going restoration project visit the Heathland Project Report. This documents the changes occurring on an area of former pine and rhododendron woodland which is being restored to a heathland habitat. This project is based in Offwell, near Honiton in Devon, England. The project site has been divided into different sections and different management techniques are being tested to determine their effects on restoration. The Heathland Project Report contains detailed scientific information and includes images, graphs, charts and diagrams. The whole report currently contains 39 pages but it is being added to on a regular basis. Annual updates of progress on the Heathland Restoration site will be made available.
Other Lowland Heaths in East Devon