27 - Yorkshire Wolds : 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: Enhance, extend and manage the unique assemblage of chalk-based habitats (lowland chalk grasslands, streams), broadleaved woodland and maritime cliffs, while protecting the provision and quality of water.

For example by:

• Enhancing biodiversity and strengthening landscape character by protecting and expanding the extent of species-rich chalk grasslands, creating grasslands to buffer key sites while reducing nutrient influences from cultivated land, and creating or restoring broadleaved woodland where appropriate.
• Creating and managing grassland buffer strips along watercourses and consider reverting arable land to grassland on steeper slopes to reduce soil erosion and nutrient run-off in arable areas, and to create buffers and links to existing sites of biodiversity interest, particularly those adjacent to the tributaries of the River Hull draining to the east.
• Restoring and enhancing riverside wetland habitats on narrow valley floors, and retaining areas of extensively managed wet grasslands, especially across the floor of winterbourne channels and relict small-scale field patterns.
• Enhancing/improving chalk-based aquatic habitats by managing rivers, streams and flushes to maintain hydrological processes, enhance water quality and provision, and maintain the biodiversity of related plant and invertebrate communities.
• Maintaining and improving the chalk aquifer for public water supply, its long-term resilience and water storage, by working with the local farming community to adopt sustainable farming practices and to improve filtration into the ground and reduce nutrient run-off through the creation or restoration of a network of grasslands.
• Seeking out opportunities for biodiversity enhancement from mineral extraction sites, for example by the creation of chalk grassland through suitable restoration schemes and managing disused chalk quarries such as Kiplingcotes for their biodiversity value.
• Seeking out opportunities for discovering more Local Geological Sites and improving access to sites for education and recreation.
• Seeking opportunities to buffer, connect and expand semi-natural habitats by planting nectar-rich seed mixes and grassland strips, and by managing roadside verges to create an ecological network, linking habitats where possible and benefiting a wealth of wildlife, including skylarks, butterflies and moths (marbled white, brown argus and cistus forester).
• Through landscape-scale partnerships, undertaking joint initiatives in the adjoining National Character Areas (NCAs) to protect the water quality and supply of groundwater of the northerly chalk streams of the Yorkshire Wolds and the headwaters in adjoining NCAs into which they flow.

SEO 2

SEO 2: Manage the coastal landscape of Flamborough Head with its diversity of cliffs, geology, geomorphology and habitats (including important seabird colonies), and enhance people’s enjoyment of it through increased opportunities for recreation and education.

For example by:

• Seeking opportunities to restore, expand and improve ecological links between chalk grassland on the cliff tops of Flamborough Head and to maintain them through extensive grazing regimes.
• Protecting the coastal spring flushes of significant botanical interest on the Flamborough Headland.
• Protecting and positively managing geological and geomorphological features, including exposures, disused quarries, landforms and river processes.
• Maintaining the habitats for populations of migratory bird species (kittiwake) and seabirds that contribute to the breeding seabird assemblage of European importance, with particular reference to maintaining the coastal cliffs, chalk reefs and sea caves and ensure links with implementation of the Flamborough Head European Marine Site management scheme.
• Managing the Heritage Coast at Flamborough Head and Bempton, enabling the local community and visitors to enjoy access, good facilities and opportunities for recreation and to enjoy the interpretation of the unique geological heritage and wildlife of the coast.
• Expanding the coastal path to link to the Cleveland Way (Filey to Speeton) as part of the Coastal Access Scheme.
• Allowing the natural retreat of the cliff line at Flamborough Head, thus enabling internationally designated sites to evolve under natural processes.

SEO 3

SEO 3: Improve opportunities to enhance people’s enjoyment of the area while protecting high levels of tranquillity by conserving extensive views and intimate, steep-sided valleys which contribute to sense of place, and by protecting and promoting the extensive historic evidence of past human settlement, landscape change and designed landscapes.

For example by:

• Encouraging more people to visit the distinctive open countryside for quiet enjoyment and by developing new educational ‘tracker packs’, reconnecting people with the importance of the landscape, geodiversity and biodiversity for provisioning and cultural services, along with new educational access sites linked to the Yorkshire Wolds Way, Way of the Roses and Yorkshire Wolds Cycle Route.
• Ensuring that significant built developments do not adversely impact on the historic interest, recreational enjoyment and open character of the area, helping to maintain panoramic views and a sense of ‘escapism’ on the distinctive chalk topography, particularly the escarpment.
• Maintaining the lightly settled character and traditional settlement pattern of medieval villages traditionally located along spring lines, and later, estate villages and scattered farmsteads.
• Encouraging the use of traditional building materials (brick and pantiled roof buildings, with limestone to the west and chalk near Flamborough Head),
  to retain the connection between the local vernacular and the underlying geology, and restoring and maintaining existing traditional buildings of brick, chalk or cobble barns and model/stud farms.
• Improving access to and interpretation of historic sites and features for local communities and visitors to understand and enjoy the heritage surrounding them, and revealing their role in the development of the landscape over time.
• Maintaining the visible and hidden finite resource of past human landscape change, land use and settlement – for example, the extensive prehistoric, ritual landscapes, later iron-age and medieval settlements, and 18th-century landscape reorganisation.
• Managing medieval deer parks and post-medieval designed parkland associated with the large estates, including restoration of vistas and care of veteran trees.
• Improving and extending access to recreation for a wide range of users by developing shorter circular routes linked to historic sites, cycle routes, bridleways and National Trails, and by introducing educational packs for schoolchildren.

SEO 4

SEO 4: Maintain a sustainable but productive arable landscape, while expanding and connecting semi-natural habitats to benefit biodiversity, and soil and water quality by promoting good agricultural practice, extending grasslands along field margins and slopes, implementing extensive grazing regimes and ensuring compliance with regulations on nitrate vulnerable zones (NVZs) to manage fertiliser inputs.

For example by:

• Encouraging farmers and landowners in the Yorkshire Wolds (and immediately adjoining NCAs) to restore and create semi-natural habitats to improve water infiltration and reduce nitrate input, for example, through take-up of environmental stewardship arable options, extending grasslands along field margins and slopes to prevent sediment run-off, and improving water quality, biodiversity and pollination.
• Encouraging management interventions on arable farmland to benefit farmland bird species such as grey partridge, lapwing, turtle dove, yellow wagtail, tree sparrow, corn bunting, quail, barn owl and yellowhammer.
• Developing an integrated package of catchment sensitive farming initiatives along the headwaters of the River Hull and Settrington Beck/ River Derwent.
• Promoting good management of existing hedges and hedgerow trees, filling in gaps and allowing them to fill out.
• Improve soil quality and manage soil erosion by reducing cultivation on slopes and establishing permanent grassland where possible, increasing the organic content of soils by using green cover crops, and encouraging extensive grazing regimes on soils most vulnerable to compaction.
• Conserving archaeological features through land management practices, for example, through reversion of arable to grassland where land management threatens the integrity of earthworks and below-ground archaeology and by encouraging scrub removal on earthworks (Neolithic, bronze and iron-age monuments).

Additional opportunity 1

Additional opportunity 1: Create new native woodlands to extend the habitat network, while respecting open views of the NCA, linking these areas to other woodlands, semi-natural habitats, scrub, hedgerows and species-rich grassland.

For example by:

• Where appropriate, creating new native, calcareous ash woodlands to link with the existing resource and with hedgerows, while carefully
  avoiding potentially impacting on semi-natural, species-rich grassland.
• Bringing existing woodlands into appropriate active management.
• Identifying barriers to movement between woodland patches and close these links where appropriate with natural regeneration, new native planting of woodland or hedgerows and allowing scrub to develop in non-species-rich grassland.
• Maintaining diverse woodland structures in calcareous ash woodlands and, where appropriate, supporting the practice of coppicing.
• Ensuring that new woodlands are created in appropriate places so that they contribute to landscape character, thus providing shelter for farmsteads, although enclosing the open plateau areas or intruding on skylines should be avoided.
• Creating riparian woodland along watercourses and wider catchment planting on the lower eastern slopes to help promote rainfall infiltration into the soil, reducing water pollution and sediment run-off.