Conservation of wildlife and habitats usually involves protecting sensitive areas by legislation,
advice to and co-operation of the landowners or the pruchase of land for management as nature
reserves.
Many of Dorset's best wildlife habitats are owned or managed by the
Dorset Wildlife Trust, the
National Trust or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. All three organisations work
closely with English Nature which is the governmet's statutory adviser on nature coservation.
See also:-
Wildlife in Dorset
Sites of Nature Conservation Interest
The Dorset Wildlife Trust
embarked on a project to register all the sites in the county which where
of interest in terms of nature conservation but not significantly enough to warrant their scheduling
as SSI's in the early
1990s. The DWT's register has grown to include nearly 1,200 sites in Dorset covering nearly 10,000
hectares of land and involving 650 landowners.
The SNCIs project has provided a valuable link between nature conservationists and the farming
community with SNCI staff visiting the sites to provide conservation advice to landowners and
assisting them in obtaining grant aid.
The Dorset Wildlife Trust
The Dorset Wildlife Trust, then known as the Dorset Naturalists' Trust took over the running
of its first nature reserve in 1962 when it leased the northern part of
Brownsea Island from the
National Trust.
Funded by donations, grants and sponsors, the trust not only runs some fourty nature reserves
but carries out other valyable conservation work such as running the register of
Sites of Nature Conservation Interest which it started in the early 1990's.
Nature Reserves in Dorset
Alder Hills Nature Reserve, Parkstone, Poole, Dorset
The natural climax vegetation of Dorset is, as is true for the rest of the British Isles, mixed
woodland, even if the primeaval woodlands of much of the county were somewhat sparse on account of
the sandy nature of the soils and their lack of nutrients. The activities of man and his domesticated
animals have profoundly altered the landscape of Dorset since
Neolithic man's arrival
after the recession of the glaciers of the
last ice age.
Having cleared the majority of Dorset's land of woodland, man continued to harvest the
heathlands which were created on the poor
soils and deplete them further of nutrients to favour the
heathland vegetation which survived on such
meagre fare as was available. At the mid-18thcentury, this heathland economy ensured that the huge
swathes of
Dorset's heaths covered about half of the county. Since that time, there has been a dramatic decrease
in the extent of the heathland which has been
matched by the fragmentation of the areas which are left.
During the last three decades of the 20th century saw a huge swing in attitude towards
Dorset's habitats; they are now seen as something valuable and worth preserving for future generations
rather than as wilderness to be tamed. Despite this, all types of habitat are threatened in
Dorset, not least by the pressures of a growing population in this densely populated part of the
world. This is particularly so in the east of the county where not only have the ancient towns of
Christchurch and Poole
grown rapidly but Bournemouth has mushroomed into a huge connurbation within
a few centuries. Not only is there constant demand for land for housing, transport and industry,
but the inhabitants of these centers of population seek their recreation in the Dorset countryside
causing a threat by the shear pressure of their numbers.
Grasslands
The natural climax vegetation of the British Isles is mixed woodland and if grasslands are not
to be lost to the natural succession of scrub and woodland then they need to be grazed.
The National Trust owns large tracts of grassland in
Dorset on the Purbeck Coast and
at Godlingston Hill and Ballard Down.
One of the biggest problems which the National Trust encounter in managing these grasslands is the
encroachment of gorse or furze.
The Trust has tackled this, initially, by cutting and burning the
gorse, followed by grazing the
grasslands with cattle specially released for the purpose.
Much of Ballard Down was arable agricultural land which the National Trust commenced restoring to
grassland in 1976 by seeding grasses and encouraging other wild plants to colonise the area
naturally.
The Trust also manages coastal limestone grasslands at Dancing Ledge, Seacombe and Spyway Farm. On
these sites the problem is to control the spread of tor grass. This has been achieved with the
introduction of Exmoor ponies which, by their grazing, not only maintain the traditional grassland
landscapes here but also encourage such rare plants as the early spider orchid.