39 - Humberhead Levels : Detailed Statements of Environmental Opportunity

This section expands on the Headline Statements of Environmental Opportunity and provides further detail on each of the Statements of Environmental Opportunity.

SEO 1

SEO 1: Safeguard, manage and expand the wetland habitats, including the internationally important lowland raised bogs, the floodplain grazing marsh, reedbeds, wet pastures and watercourses, to protect and enhance biodiversity, contribute to landscape character, address climate change and reduce flood risks.

For example by:

• Seeking opportunities to restore and expand lowland raised bogs, and to bring adjacent land into management that will support these vulnerable habitats, including raising the water table levels and reverting arable land to pasture.
• Seeking opportunities to restore and expand floodplain meadows, wet pastures, grazing marsh, fens and other water dependent habitats, creating links where possible to improve the resilience of habitats to climate change and enable species movement.
• Working collaboratively with groups of farmers and landowners, Internal Drainage Boards and others to achieve comprehensive management of water table levels, raising them where appropriate to prevent peaty soils from drying out, support semi-natural habitats, and protect palaeo-environmental evidence.
• Encouraging cultivation practices that will maintain cover on vulnerable peaty soils and protect underlying palaeo-environmental evidence.
• Ensuring that managed realignment sites on the Humber are managed to create new intertidal and saline habitats that will maintain and enhance biodiversity and landscape character, while also providing effective flood defence.
• Optimising the benefits from extending washlands for flood storage, and accommodating occasional overtopping of flood defences through putting land down to wet pastures/floodplain grazing marsh, thus reducing flood risk elsewhere.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Manage the agricultural landscape to retain its distinctive character and its productivity, while improving its contribution to biodiversity, the protection of vulnerable soils and palaeo-environmental evidence, and the water resource.

For example by:

• Ensuring that the network of ditches and dykes are brought under sound rotational management so that they continue to function while also retaining a proportion of emergent vegetation, thus forming key links between wetland and other semi-natural habitats, and providing important habitats for species such as water voles and dragonflies.
• Seeking opportunities to bring land adjacent to semi-natural habitats, especially wetland habitats, into appropriate management so that habitats can be protected from any potentially adverse impacts from nutrient run-off, chemical spray drift and/or reduction of water table levels.
• Encouraging the introduction of a wider range of habitats within the arable areas, such as permanent grassland field margins and buffers alongside watercourses and wetland habitats, and linking them where possible to other semi-natural habitats to create more resilient networks and enable species movement, while also reducing sediment and nutrient run-off.
• Encouraging the use of land management practices and arable options that enhance conditions for farmland birds and invertebrates.
• Encouraging the use of land management practices such as over-wintering stubble and introducing fallow into rotations, to improve soil structure and organic content especially on sandy soils, and improve resistance to erosion on peaty soils.
• Seeking opportunities to create species rich grassland along the many miles of floodbank, thus providing support for pollinating insects within the agricultural landscape.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Manage the landscape features such as semi-natural habitats and historic field patterns that reveal local variations in landscape character, often arising from underlying soils and history of drainage, to enhance people’s understanding and enjoyment of the landscape.

For example by:

• Managing and expanding existing semi-natural habitats, including floodplain grazing marsh, lowland heathlands, fens, wet woodlands, wet pastures and meadows so that the influences of the underlying soils and drainage are made evident, establishing connecting networks of semi-natural habitats where possible, and enhancing their biodiversity value and their contribution to landscape character.
• Conserving the internationally significant medieval strip fields on the Isle of Axholme and actively seeking ways of encouraging land managers to retain the evidence of the strips.
• Conserving the strong patterns of cables and warps, as around Thorne and Goole.
• Conserving the ridge and furrow fields and managing and strengthening the pastoral landscape around Fishlake and Sykehouse, with its hedges, pastures and meadows, and typical moated farmhouses.
• Conserving the medieval strip fields, meadows and pastures of the Lower Derwent Valley, for their historic interest as well as their contribution to landscape character and biodiversity.
• Ensuring that the existing lowland heaths are under sound management to achieve a robust habitat with mosaics of diverse structure and vegetation, to protect soils from erosion and enhance their biodiversity and contribution to the landscape.
• Seeking opportunities to interpret the influence of underlying deposits and the history of drainage of the area on the landscape of today, to expand people’s understanding and enjoyment of the landscape.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Protect the open and expansive character of the landscape, its cultural features and sense of remoteness, by ensuring that new development is sensitively located, accommodates green infrastructure, retains long views and makes a positive contribution to biodiversity.

For example by:

• Ensuring that development associated with transport corridors, Robin Hood airport and other urban and industrial expansion includes provision of green infrastructure and addresses flood risk mitigation.
• Ensuring that new developments are located and designed with particular consideration for keeping long views open, and limiting the use of native tree and shrub planting to integrate structures but without unduly impacting on the open character of the area.
• Ensuring that local styles and materials such as Barton brick are used in the restoration of traditional vernacular buildings.
• Seeking opportunities in the transport corridors to create and improve linear connections between habitats, to aid species movements.
• Restoring sand and gravel extraction sites to semi-natural habitats where possible so that they enhance biodiversity interest and make a positive contribution to landscape character, while retaining exposures and providing access where appropriate so that understanding of geodiversity can be improved.
• Minimising light spill and noise through careful control and design, in particular to retain the tranquillity in the more remote rural areas.
• Avoiding development which would impact on the lowland raised mires, heathlands and floodplain meadows, where there is a particularly strong sense of remoteness and high levels of tranquillity.
• Maintaining the long and unbroken views to distant horizons.

SEO 5

SEO 5: Plan for the improved enjoyment and understanding of the landscape and its subtle variations, its inspirational qualities, its biodiversity, geodiversity and historic interest, its role in producing food and mitigating climate change.

For example by:

• Maintaining and improving the recreational opportunities provided by the network of canals, paths along flood banks, and navigable waterways, seeking opportunities to create circular routes linked to local towns and villages.
• Conserving the network of drainage ditches, dykes, canals and other watercourses with all their historic features such as brick bridges, pumphouses, sluices, and old river courses.
• Measuring, monitoring and recording elements of the historic environment to improve understanding and provide interpretation of the history of the area for residents and visitors.
• Encouraging sustainable access to selected semi-natural habitats such as the lowland heaths at Skipwith Common, and the Humberhead Peatlands National Nature Reserves, a flagship for access, education and public enjoyment.
• Providing interpretation to reveal the connections between geodiversity, historic development and the landscape of today with its biodiversity interest, agricultural production and subtle variations in landscape character.
• Seeking opportunities for more people to be inspired by the long views, open skies, sightings of birds and other wildlife, and links to past ways of living, including traditional wildfowling.