149 - The Culm : 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: Seek to maintain, enhance and join up the distinctive and internationally important areas of Culm grassland, with their simple patterns of fields, hedgebanks, woodlands, rivers and tributaries, and their strong links to past land use and settlement. This will bring benefits in terms of reducing soil erosion, improving soil quality and water availability, regulating water flow, promoting the interpretation of the historic environment, enhancing biodiversity and supporting pastoral farming.

For example by:

• Extending and linking fragmented areas of Culm grassland managed through extensive, productive grazing, including areas of purple moor grass and rush pasture, focusing on locations where this will impede water flow, provide enhanced water quality and help to store water – reducing the effects of peak rainfall.
• Realising opportunities for creating Culm grassland on areas of cleared conifer plantation – particularly where it would provide enhanced habitat linkage.
• Encouraging the uptake of grant schemes to support the purposes of international (SAC) designation and the management of Culm grassland, benefiting numerous invertebrate species (particularly marsh fritillary), and floristic and invertebrate diversity generally. This will also benefit the conservation of the historic environment.
• Introducing flexibility (including less intensive grazing regimes) into land management, supporting existing mixed farming systems and encouraging the re-introduction of more, and increasing the floristic diversity of ryegrass leys. This will all encourage a more diverse range of habitats, vegetation types and structures to develop, thus enabling habitats to respond to the effects of climate change, and enabling species to move as a result.
• Managing and extending the area of internationally important western oak woodland on steep valley sides and in coastal combes, supporting extensive lichen and bryophyte communities, aiding water infiltration and reducing soil erosion.
• Where appropriate, supporting and re-introducing sustainable, traditional woodland management techniques, such as selective felling, pollarding and coppicing, particularly on steeper valley sides in areas where soil erosion is not a risk. This will provide a sustainable local source of wood fuel and biomass.
• Maintaining levels of important scrub habitat to benefit a range of bird species and scarce invertebrates such as the dingy mocha moth.
• Protecting and reinforcing the pattern and network of hedgerows and hedgebanks, the often ancient and defining character of the ridges and hills. This will provide opportunities for the movement and migration of flora and fauna, regulate water flow and reduce soil erosion, particularly to support and reinstate extensive grazing regimes, and to restrict livestock access to rivers and streams. Where possible, using the arisings from hedgerow and hedgerow tree management as a source of local wood fuel.
• Realising opportunities to make further connections between arable and pastoral land use through features such as hedgebanks, streams, sunken lanes and woodlands. Particular attention should be paid to features on the steeper slopes of valleys, to reduce soil erosion and subsequent sediment run-off into watercourses.
• Working with existing projects (such as Nature Improvement Areas, Living Landscapes and catchment restoration projects), as well as emerging initiatives, to deliver enhanced land management and habitat linkage, as well as real engagement with local communities and user groups.
• Maintaining and creating wetland habitats (including wet woodland) in the flood plains and upper reaches of the Taw, Torridge and Tamar and their tributaries, where these habitats can help slow water flow, reducing unwanted downstream flooding.
• Maintaining areas of cliff-top grassland in favourable condition, through restoring grazing to accessible areas and to the unimproved pastures in the combe bases.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Safeguard the rich geological record and current geomorphological processes, particularly along the internationally important coastline. Where possible, allow the unimpaired operation of natural coastal processes, resulting in the creation of new habitats, conserving and enhancing landscape character, and benefiting biodiversity and the historic environment.

For example by:

• Maintaining and enhancing geological features where they are best expressed, such as the Carboniferous sediments and Variscan folds exposed on the coast, and the landforms and sediments associated with the Sticklepath Fault.
• Sympathetically managing active quarries with special interest, and appropriately managing redundant extraction sites to allow for the continued study of geological records.
• Maintaining the natural processes at the Northam Burrows sand dune system in the Taw-Torridge estuary, keeping the landward areas free from development, and promoting natural marginal and tidal habitats that support a rich assemblage of overwintering passage waders, and other flora and fauna.
• Undertaking landscape restoration, creation and enhancement activities informed by and planned around the nationally recognised natural beauty, special qualities, elements and features of the North Devon AONB and Cornwall AONB.
• Maintaining an undeveloped coastline, contributing to a sense of wildness, naturalness and exposure, and allowing geomorphological processes along the coast. This will promote the development of estuarine and intertidal elements such as mudflats, sand flats, salt marsh, dunes and shingle bars, which all contribute to flood risk management, coastal protection, landscape character, biodiversity and recreation, while maximising carbon sequestration and storage in intertidal sediments.
• Ensuring that plans to enable adaptation to coastal change are in place, particularly where hard defences are not sustainable.
• Incorporating coastal heritage sites into adaptation plans through recording, promoting, understanding and recognising their historic significance, and their contribution to local culture and coastal landscape character.
• Maintaining the quality of beaches and the shoreline, ensuring their ongoing attractiveness to visitors.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Protect open views and the simple, austere character of the landscape and seascape, enhancing access to and interpretation of the wealth of natural and heritage assets, and recreational opportunities, throughout the area – including the South West Coast Path.

For example by:

• Maintaining important open views, tranquillity, a sense of wildness and connection to the maritime environment through sensitive, responsive planning of future land use and offshore developments.
• Maintaining the pattern and distribution of settlement, carefully locating any necessary new development and infrastructure to avoid clutter and visual intrusion.
• Promoting the use of local vernacular building materials, proportions and sizes, using this understanding to inspire locally-distinctive and sustainable development.
• Promoting the important role played by soil in the development of the landscape through a network of interpretation sites – particularly on the coast, along forestry tracks, or where roads and rivers expose soils and make them accessible.
• Carefully planning the location of new woodland, tree planting and land-cover to maintain a sense of openness.
• Maintaining and improving access along and connecting with the South West Coast Path National Trail, and throughout the rights of way network, and promoting enjoyment, awareness and understanding of less well-known sites and features. This will accommodate and diffuse tourism pressures in order to maintain existing levels of tranquillity, remoteness and landscape character.
• Encouraging access to, and interpretation and understanding of, cultural, natural and heritage assets by all sections of the community, to enable better current and future management and planning of the environment. Delivering the purposes of the North Devon AONB and Cornwall AONB to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the landscape.
• Promoting access to the natural environment across the area. Making the most natural, historic, inspirational and tranquil places available to all, particularly incorporating sustainable access to and from the South West Coast Path, and supporting and encouraging sustainable visitor initiatives.
• Maintaining the open character and archaeological interest and potential, in addition to its benefits for biodiversity and carbon capture, of the few remaining areas of rough ground found across the area.

Additional opportunity 1

Additional opportunity 1: Reinforce and enhance the existing landscape structure as part of any identified growth of urban areas, principally around Barnstaple, Bideford, Holsworthy, Torrington and Westward Ho! and other larger settlements, ensuring that high-quality green infrastructure is incorporated into all scales of development, enhancing access, recreation, landscape character, biodiversity and geodiversity.

For example by:

• Using the traditional character of the internationally important coastal landscape, and the nationally recognised special qualities of the North Devon AONB, as the foundation for all new development along or adjacent to the coast.
• Promoting the use of sustainable and locally sourced materials, vernacular building techniques and styles, and existing landscape character, to inform design to ensure visual and functional integration with the surrounding landscape. Promoting the integration of renewable energy technologies as part of new low-carbon, sensitive developments.
• Using and replicating natural and semi-natural landscape features, such as hedgebanks, permanent grassland, broadleaf woodland, streams and wetlands to help integrate new development and reduce flood risk to both new and existing settlements.
• Providing access to high-quality green space through well-designed green infrastructure, to benefit health and wellbeing, and to provide habitat, increasing the permeability of the urban landscape to biodiversity.