East of England Biodiversity Forum

The core nature areas

"It is vital we retain the core areas of biodiversity"

Key

	Situation
	Marine
	Coastal
	Designated sites
	Core nature areas

	Aspirations more
	Buffer zones
	Links & enlargements
	Landscape-scale projects

Existing priority habitats

These areas represent the highest concentrations of existing priority habitat in the region:

These habitats, which possess suitable soil conditions, topography and ecological connectivity, clearly provide the greatest potential for managing, restoring and re-creating high quality habitat.
The core biodiversity areas are appropriate for both protection and enhancement.
The adoption of the 1:50,000 scale level-2 LDU (see Glossary) enables the new map to show considerably more detail and present a far more accurate depiction of the situation on the ground. For example, valuable watercourses such as the Ouse Washes have been included, and many core areas enlarged so as to better reflect the more detailed data on habitats increasingly being made available to the Forum.

Challenge 2: ‘Realising biodiversity's true value’
Biodiversity has much to offer. It contributes to the Region's economic prosperity. It makes a social contribution too. Yet authorities too often overlook its value and the public, who know little about it, have restricted access to it as well.

The Forum is aiming to make both authorities and the public better aware of biodiversity's contributions and ensure access to it is increased.

Click here to view the action plan pdf

Challenge 6: ‘Enhancing the evidence base’
In order for the Forum to effectively tackle its various targets it needs a good combination of local and regional data on which to base conservation decisions and allocate its often scarce conservation resources.

In this Region there is a gap between the demand for data and its supply, as well as some deficiencies in its quality. The Forum intends to address this gap and overcome the data shortcomings so as to be better able to address UK BAP priority habitats and species requirements.

Click here to view the action plan pdf
Click here to view all the Challenges