Somerset Levels - Biodiversity and Conservation

Biodiversity and Conservation

As a result of their wetland nature, the Moors and Levels contain a rich biodiversity of national and international importance. They support a vast variety of plant species, including common plants such as Marsh Marigold, Meadowsweet, and Ragged Robin. The area is an important feeding ground for birds including Bewick’s Swan, Eurasian Curlew, Common Redshank, Skylark, Common Snipe, Common Teal, Wigeon, and Whimbrel, as well as birds of prey including the Marsh Harrier and Peregrine Falcon. A wide range of insect species is also present, including rare invertebrates, particularly beetles including the Lesser silver water beetle, Bagous nodulosus, Hydrophilus piceus, Odontomyia angulata, Oulema erichsoni, and Valvata macrostoma. In addition, the area supports an important Otter population. Water Voles (Arvicola amphibius) are being encouraged to recolonise areas of the Levels where they have been absent for 10 years, by the capture of Mink (Mustela vison).

In 2010, a project was started to reintroduce the Common Crane to the Levels, after an absence of 400 years. The birds' eggs were flown from Germany to the Slimbridge wetland reserve managed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (a UK charity) at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, and reared to the age of five months before being released onto the Levels. The "Great Crane Project" aims to introduce around 20 of the birds each year until 2015. The work, which included collaboration with Pensthorpe Nature Reserve and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, was supported by a grant of £700k from Viridor Credits.

The Levels and Moors contain 32 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (12 of them also Special Protection Areas), the River Huntspill and Bridgwater Bay National Nature Reserves, the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar Site covering about 86,000 acres (348 km2), the Somerset Levels National Nature Reserve, Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve, Ham Wall National Nature Reserve and numerous Scheduled monuments. The Brue Valley Living Landscape conservation project commenced in January 2009 and aims to restore, recreate and reconnect habitat. It aims to ensure that wildlife is enhanced and capable of sustaining itself in the face of climate change while guaranteeing farmers and other landowners can continue to use their land profitably. It is one of an increasing number of landscape scale conservation projects in the UK. About 72,000 acres (291 km2) of the Levels are recognised as an Environmentally Sensitive Area, and other areas are designated as Areas of High Archaeological Potential, but there is currently no single conservation designation covering the Levels and Moors.

A survey in 2005 discovered that 11 of the known wooden Bronze Age causeways on the Levels had been destroyed or vanished and others were seriously damaged, caused by the reduction in water levels and subsequent exposure of the timber to oxygen and aerobic bacteria. Part of the Sweet Track is being actively conserved. Following purchase of land by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and installation of a water pumping and distribution system along a 500-metre (1,600 ft) section, several hundred metres of the track's length are now being actively conserved. This method of preserving wetland archaeological remains (i.e. maintaining a high water table and saturating the site) is rare. A 500-metre (1,600 ft) section, which lies within the land owned by the Nature Conservancy Council, has been surrounded by a clay bank to prevent drainage into surrounding lower peat fields, and water levels are regularly monitored. The viability of this method is demonstrated by comparing it with the nearby Abbot's Way, which has not had similar treatment, and which in 1996 was found to have become dewatered and desiccated. Evaluation and maintenance of water levels in the Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve involves the Nature Conservancy Council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Somerset Levels Project.