AFON
The Great Heath Project: Conserving a Landscape
The south east of Dorset is home to the Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch conurbation, the biggest population centre in the county. This urban environment is home to many people, but in between all the buildings, roads and humans, wildlife can still be found.
The ‘Great Heath’ that is being conserved
Poole Harbour sits right on the edge of all this human activity, the world’s second largest natural harbour and home to internationally important populations of birds and a myriad of sea creatures. This well-known ecosystem is a defining landscape in the region, surrounded by famous locations like the millionaire playground, Sandbanks, Poole Quay and the Studland peninsula on the Isle of Purbeck.
A less well-known ecosystem in south east Dorset is lowland heathland. This beautiful, open habitat is dominated by heathers and gorse, and is home to a huge diversity of species, many of which are rare and even endemic to heathland. Heathland itself is rarer than rainforest habitats! Bizarrely, this habitat is actually one originally created by humans. Thousands of years ago, woodland dominated the majority of the British Isles. During the Bronze Age, people started clearing the trees to make way for agriculture. This led to the creation of the heathland, which at its height stretched from the New Forest in the east to the Isle of Purbeck to the south west, forming one continuous wild landscape.
For 2000 years or so, this habitat continued to thrive. Then, as the dawn of the Industrial Revolution approached, the heath began to decline. To begin with, areas of heathland were reclaimed for newer farming practices. Then, chunks of land were sold off for conifer plantations, development of new housing and roads. Over the next 200 years, 130 square miles of heath were lost, leaving a tiny fraction of the original range. The remaining patches were looked after by many different organisations. Some, like Dorset Wildlife Trust, worked hard to conserve this unique habitat. Unfortunately others left their heathland to degrade.
Volunteers on Parley Common
This is where The Great Heath project stepped in. In 2014, The Great Heath project (led by Dorset Wildlife Trust) managed to secure funding to buy key areas of heathland and other important wildlife habitat that were up for sale. With a group of partner organisations (including Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, Borough of Poole and the Erica Trust), they set out to ensure that these pieces of land would be managed to conserve and restore heathland in south east Dorset.
I became involved with The Great Heath project in 2015 when I was lucky to become a trainee at Dorset Wildlife Trust. Through my role, I worked with staff and volunteers to improve the heathland across the region, including on some of the 1435 acres of land bought thanks to funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project, named after a historic title given to this once huge swathe of heathland, has three specific aims: to secure nature reserves for wildlife and people, to improve connections and access to the countryside, and to provide people with new opportunities. We did this by running volunteer work parties, where we brought heathland back into better shape, putting on events to get local people interested in our beautiful sites and training sessions so people could learn how to identify and survey wildlife across the nature reserves.
A sand lizard, a species that relies on the heathland
This has all added up to make The Great Heath a ‘Living Landscape’ – a place where wildlife and people can thrive. This is especially important in today’s world, where wildlife is under threat more than ever. Despite the excellent conservation work happening in The Great Heath, the fact remains that there are only fragments of this landscape now left. We must ensure that they stay protected, to form a series of ‘stepping stones’ across south east Dorset, to help important species like sand lizards and Dartford warblers to continue to prosper, and connect populations from the New Forest to the Isle of Purbeck. Thankfully, The Great Heath partnership are up for the challenge!