The South East Woodlands Project: rebuilding biodiversity through woodland management

D.J. Hoare, N. Bourn, K. Dent, S. Ellis, C. Kelly, L. McLellan, F. Thompson & S. Wheatley

2012

Butterfly Conservation Report No. S12-04

Butterfly Conservation

Company limited by guarantee, registered in England (2206468) Registered Office: Manor Yard, East Lulworth, Wareham, Dorset. BH20 5QP

Charity registered in England and Wales (254937) and in Scotland (SCO39268)

www.butterfly-conservation.org

Hoare et al 2012, The South East Woodlands Project. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham. (Butterfly Conservation Report No. S12-04). Contents

Summary…………………………………………………………………………………..….. 1 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….... 3

2. Strategy and methods……………………………………………………………………...... 6

2.1. Funding………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 2.2. Landscapes….………………………………………………………………...……...... 7 2.3. Project staff……………………………………………………………………...…….. 10 2.4. Activities and audiences…………………………………………………………….... 10 2.5. Habitat management………………………………………………………..………… 11 2.6. Monitoring project impacts………………………………………………………........ 12

3. Results…………………………………………………………………………………….….. 17 3.1. Introductory events……...…………………………………………………………...... 18 3.2. Volunteer training…………………………………………………………………..….. 20 3.3. Management workshops.……………………………………………………………... 22 3.4. Site advice visits……..……………………………………………………………….... 23 3.5. Woodland conference…………………………………………………………………. 23

4. Results: Habitat improvements………………………………………………………….…. 25

4.1. Changes in woodland management…………………………………………………. 25 4.2. Woodland management activity……………………………………………………… 34 4.3. Habitat condition……………………………………………………………………….. 35 4.4. Funding sources for woodland management……………………………………….. 42 4.5. Predicted management condition trend (post 2010)……………………………….. 47

5. Results: Species responses at the landscape scale…………………………………….. 51

5.1 Lepidoptera score 2007-2010………………………………………………………….. 51 5.2 Case study 1: Pearl-bordered Fritillary in the Tytherley Woods……………………. 58 5.3 Case study 2: The Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods………………………… 63

6. Conclusions and recommendations……………………………………………………...... 69

6.1 Project design……………………………………………………………………………. 69 6.2 Project engagement…………………………………………………………………….. 71 6.3 Implementing woodland management………………………………………………… 72 6.4 Funding mechanisms for management......…………………………………………… 73 6.5 Monitoring project outcomes…………………………………………………………… 75 6.6 Species responses……………………………………………………………………… 76 6.7 Project legacy…………………………………………………………………………… 80

7. Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………………… 83 8. References………………………………………………………………………………..…... 84

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Summary

Between 2007 and 2011 Butterfly Conservation’s South East Woodlands Project worked to halt the declines of woodland butterflies and moths by supporting sustainable woodland management across three landscape-scale demonstration areas in south-east England.

Full-time project officers based in each landscape delivered a structured programme of nearly 500 training and advisory events to more than 6800 people, demonstrating that an enthusiastic audience of land managers, volunteers and the wider public were keen to take an active involvement in local wildlife conservation.

Advice on habitat management was given on 188 sites covering more than 9,000ha of woodland, with 79% of all site managers in our target landscapes accepting management advice.

We used a range of funding mechanisms to support woodland management, including economic forestry, eWGS grants, agri-environment schemes, grant giving bodies and land owner funding.

Management activity increased by 22% overall across the three demonstration landscapes during the course of the project, with 65% of monitored sites improving in habitat condition for target Lepidoptera. The total area of woodland in good condition for Lepidoptera doubled.

A number of funding mechanisms can make a contribution to increasing woodland management, but targeted eWGS grants from Forestry Commission England were the most effective way of producing high quality habitat for the target species. Although economic forestry could increase management activity, without specific targeting and incentives of the kind included in eWGS grants it did not deliver the high quality habitat necessary to support habitat specialist butterflies.

Populations of threatened butterflies responded rapidly to appropriate management, reoccupying former sites in the landscape. Both Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy colonised restored habitat over distances up to 3km. Targeting management to produce high quality habitat within known colonisation range was key to this success.

There were indications that a wider range of woodland butterflies and moths also responded to project activity, with a suite of scarce species found on sites that were managed and in good habitat condition.

These species responses were achieved with only relatively modest changes to overall woodland structure: less than 10% of the total woodland area was actually opened up with management, indicating that highly threatened specialists of open habitats can be incorporated into diverse woodland landscapes in which large areas still remain undisturbed. Careful planning can avoid potential conflict with wildlife that requires unmanaged, mature woodland.

The project’s success involved collaboration with a number of partner organisations committed to the same aims, notably Forestry Commission England who provided targeted grants and significant staff time to deliver management improvements.

The involvement of skilled volunteers greatly increased project outputs, contributing more than 1000 days of in-kind work. The ongoing involvement of trained volunteer groups offers an opportunity to continue conservation action in these landscapes.

The project offers a model for implementing extensive habitat management at a landscape scale by involving communities in local conservation action.

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1. Introduction Background Britain’s woodland wildlife is in crisis. Well-monitored groups including butterflies, birds and plants all indicate a decrease in woodland biodiversity over recent decades (Fox et al. 2011; Fuller et al. 2005; Kirby et al. 2005). These declines have come despite an overall net increase in the amount of broad-leaved woodland in Britain over the same period (Forestry Commission 2001; Haines-Young et al. 2000), suggesting that a lack of woodland is not to blame.

The major factor implicated in these woodland biodiversity declines across taxa is a broad change in the structural diversity of woodlands resulting from changes in woodland management practices over several decades, including a reduction in the intensity of management (Clarke et al. 2011; Fuller et al. 2005). Traditional management of broadleaved woodlands for coppice and other wood products has greatly reduced, at the same time as plantations of non-native, fast growing conifers have matured (Mason 2007). With these changes, woodlands have developed into high forest with reduced structural and habitat diversity, lacking the open space, early succession regrowth and scrub habitats that support much of our woodland wildlife (Hopkins & Kirby 2007, Smart et al. 2007). Habitat modification by increasing numbers of deer, particularly in lowland England, and nutrient enrichment from atmospheric nitrogen are also implicated in these broad biodiversity declines (Gill & Fuller 2007; Stevens et al. 2011). Woodlands are an important habitat for butterflies and moths, including some of our most threatened species. Woodland habitats support two thirds of Britain’s 59 resident butterfly species, including at least 16 woodland specialists that rely on these habitats in part or all or part of their range (Clarke et al. 2011). Data from woodland sites in the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme provides evidence of severe declines in population abundance (up to 80% between 1985 and 2009) for species associated with open habitats in woodland, namely Wood White, Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper, Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. In contrast, butterfly species associated with mature woodland stages, tolerant of shade and infrequent management activity (Speckled Wood, White Admiral, Silver-washed Fritillary and Purple Hairstreak), have increased by 65% over the same period (Clarke et al. 2011). The reasons for these declines are complex, and vary between species, but include changes in the structural diversity of woodlands, their botanical communities and micro-climatic conditions, and an overall loss of habitat diversity and simplification of woodland structure, the same factors implicated in declines for other woodland taxa (Clarke et al. 2011). The key factor for these butterflies has been the loss of early successional habitats following a long decline in coppicing and the maturation of plantations established in the 1960s and 1970s. These open habitats are often short-lived, and usually require a carefully planned management rotation that enables butterflies to survive in a permanent colony (such as a glade or ride edge) or to disperse to find new breeding habitat nearby. Comparable data for moths are not available, but large-scale changes in woodland management and structure, particularly a reduction in open habitats and an increase in conifer cover, are considered likely drivers of changes in moth abundance and diversity (Fox 2013). The population trends highlighted since 1985 are in fact only the most recent part of a longer, even more dramatic decline over much of the twentieth century, when the distribution of many of these woodland specialists was much reduced (Asher et al. 2001).

Detailed studies of habitat specialist butterflies have consistently shown that trends in population size are driven by two key factors: habitat quality (and specifically the habitats

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required by the larval stages) and the distribution of suitable habitat across modern landscapes in time and space (metapopulation effects) (Thomas et al. 2011). Conservation efforts for many of these specialist butterflies focus on improving habitat quality on known sites and building networks of suitable or potential habitat within dispersal range of these sites. In most cases the habitat requirements of woodland specialist butterflies are well known, and the challenge is in implementing suitable woodland management at a sufficient scale and frequency to halt or reverse declines. Taking Pearl-bordered Fritillary as an example, a conservation strategy was set out in the 1990s in the form of a Species Action Plan (Barnett & Warren 1995), but the butterfly has continued to decline, with 55% of colonies in the south-east lost between two major surveys in 1997 and 2004 (Fox et al. 2006). Broad habitat-based approaches to conservation, managing for habitat targets rather than for species requirements, have singularly failed to deliver for the most threatened species: almost without exception species such as Pearl-bordered Fritillary survive only on those sites where management actions incorporate their specific habitat requirements. Effective conservation for these woodland habitat specialists requires appropriate management to be targeted at and around occupied sites to produce a network of suitable habitat within the species’ colonization range. At the same time, making this woodland management sustainable (both economically viable and ecologically effective) at this scale requires coordination and collaboration between landowners, conservation organizations and woodland markets. Butterfly Conservation and the Forestry Commission have worked in partnership to address these problems over many years. A woodland grant, the Coppice for Butterflies Challenge, was launched in 1996 to encourage the restoration of commercially viable coppice management in eight target areas across England (Warren et al. 2001). This grant, which was available until 1998, paid landowners up to 100% of the costs of coppice restoration, and was monitored from 1997-2000 to evaluate the response of target butterflies. The scheme was successful in restoring approximately 200ha of coppice across 54 sites, and showed that scarce habitat specialist butterflies such as the Wood White and Pearl-bordered Fritillary could colonise newly coppiced areas from nearby colonies. Limitations of the scheme included the short time-scale of the grant (with sites only just beginning to show benefits when the grant stopped after three years), a lack of fine-scale targeting within grant areas, and problems with deer management and standard density limiting the suitability of coppice coupes. The Forestry Commission and Butterfly Conservation also work together to improve the management of sites in the public forest estate managed by Forestry Enterprise England. Since 2000, important Forestry Commission woodlands for Lepidoptera have been identified, initially through the Species Action Plan for Butterflies (Forestry Commission 2000), and more recently through the Conservation Strategy for Lepidoptera (Forestry Commission England & Butterfly Conservation 2007). These agreements provide a framework for maintaining and enhancing butterfly and moth interest on the estate by targeting appropriate woodland management where it is most needed. The South East Woodlands Project The south east is one of the UK’s most heavily wooded regions, but it has seen some of the steepest declines in woodland specialist butterflies and moths, despite continued efforts to conserve these threatened species. Butterfly Conservation’s South East Woodland Project was developed to tackle these species declines by increasing resources for targeted conservation while examining and addressing the underlying cause: insufficient habitat management at a landscape scale. It aimed to increase active woodland management across multiple sites to produce networks of diverse woodland habitats, using threatened

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butterflies and moths as indicator species for sustainably managed woodlands rich in biodiversity. Species responses were monitored to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat management. At the same time the project promoted the links between woodland management and biodiversity, and provided opportunities for people living in south-east England to take an active role in conservation. The project was developed by Butterfly Conservation in partnership with Forestry Commission England (FCE), as well as a wide range of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local community groups, woodland owners and managers, local councils and regional government organisations. It was funded through major grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Tubney Charitable Trust, with additional support from a wide range of other sources including Forestry Commission England. This report provides a record of the project’s activities and outcomes and examines how to implement woodland conservation for threatened species at a landscape scale. Project Aims The four key aims of the project were to:

Conserve and enhance the south east’s woodland heritage by promoting sustainable woodland management and restoring connected wooded landscapes in three biodiversity-rich demonstration areas, using threatened butterflies and moths to examine species responses

Provide training and advice to woodland owners, managers and land management professionals to help existing conservation mechanisms function more effectively

Engage and involve communities in South East England in celebrating and conserving their unique woodland heritage and the threatened butterflies and moths it supports

Build and support a network of highly skilled volunteers, Woodland Guardians, to

champion biodiversity by monitoring conservation outcomes, providing management information to landowners and guiding conservation action in local communities

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2. Strategy and Methods The South East Woodlands Project ran from August 2007 until March 2011. The project set out to achieve its aims by:

Reinvigorating woodland management in three landscape areas to improve their condition for biodiversity;

Employing project officers to deliver targeted conservation advice and support sustainable woodland management across these three landscapes with a focus on the habitats needed by threatened butterflies and moths. These landscapes were then used as demonstration sites to promote woodland conservation and sustainable management across the wider region;

Recruiting, training and supporting a sustainable network of volunteers - Woodland Guardians - to champion woodland biodiversity and provide informed, targeted conservation work for years to come;

Using the demonstration areas to bring members of the public closer to butterflies and moths, providing opportunities for local communities to explore, celebrate and conserve their natural woodland heritage, and raising awareness of the unique biodiversity of the region’s woods and its dependence upon woodland management.

Our approach was to combine detailed management work in specific demonstration landscapes with a broader programme of outreach activities to reach a wider audience and make advice and resources available across the south east. The project operated across three landscape-scale demonstration areas covering a total of 83,561 hectares in Sussex, Kent and on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. Examples of lessons learned and best practice, in both volunteer development and woodland management, were taken from the demonstration areas and applied at other woodland sites across the south east. Butterflies and moths were used as flagship species to illustrate to local communities how sustainable management is essential to maintain woodland habitats. The project focused on increasing the public understanding of woodlands as a valuable resource for a wide range of wildlife, as well as providing public enjoyment and economic benefits. We aimed to encourage local communities to value their woodland resources and provided essential guidance to woodland owners and managers on how biodiversity can thrive alongside sustainable woodland production. The project also developed a range of resources, providing examples of best practice in woodland management and conservation that can be widely applied and replicated in woodlands across the UK.

2.1 Funding Funding for the South East Woodlands Project came from a wide range of sources, with individual funders supporting specific parts of the project over specific time periods. The Heritage Lottery Fund provided a grant of £289,456 from September 2007 until March 2011, which funded the delivery of many of the project’s core activities, the production of resources and staff costs for the three project officers. The Tubney Charitable Trust provided a grant of £200,000 from August 2007 until March 2011, which funded the Project Manager post and the delivery of many of the project’s conservation objectives. Forestry Commission England provided a contribution of £12,000 towards project costs, as well as targeting funds from the English Woodland Grant Scheme (eWGS) to the three landscape areas and significant staff

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time to assist in the delivery of these grants and broader project strategy. The funding of habitat management costs, including eWGS grants and other mechanisms, is discussed in section 2.5. In-kind support was also provided from a variety of sources, most notably the three partner organisations that hosted each project officer, providing office space and administrative support as an in-kind contribution: The Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), The High Weald AONB and Hampshire County Council. A full list of project supporters is provided in section 8.

2.2 Landscapes Three landscape areas were selected as the focus for much of the project work, acting as demonstration sites to address the project aims which:

provided a geographic spread across the south east;

provided venues for training woodland owners and managers, volunteers and the public;

focused intensive conservation effort on three of the most significant woodland complexes for Lepidoptera in the region.

The location and boundaries of demonstration areas (see Figure 1) were agreed in consultation with our partner organisations to target priorities for management effort and to set realistic goals for restoring a functional woodland network within each landscape. Importantly, they were all areas that urgently needed management intervention and were not already being addressed by existing landscape initiatives. In each area we selected a small group of ‘target species’ of habitat specialist butterflies and moths to help focus our conservation effort: Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria euphrosyne, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria selene, Duke of Burgundy Hamearis lucina, Grizzled Skipper Pyrgus malvae, Dingy Skipper Erynnis tages, Argent & Sable Rheumaptera hastata and Drab Looper Minoa murinata (only a subset of these was present in each landscape). These species all share a broad association with open habitats in woodland in South East England, including open sunny ride edges, permanent and temporary clearings, managed coppice and clearfell forestry systems (Clarke et al. 2011). This targeting us to monitor the management of these broad habitat features systematically across all three landscapes whilst still incorporating the detailed habitat requirements (for example specific larval foodplants) needed by each species. We did not limit our management recommendations or surveys exclusively to these species, but sought to incorporate their habitat requirements where appropriate in the landscape. Project boundaries defined the limited availability of targeted eWGS grants administered by Forestry Commission England. Sites within the project boundary were eligible for BIO80 Woodland Improvement Grants (WIGs) at enhanced funding rates (80% of ‘standard costs’ for items of management work), with sites outside the boundaries eligible for WIG funding (which pays 50% of standard costs) as in the rest of England (see section 2.5 for further details of management funding). The landscape boundaries set at the start of the project in 2007 were reviewed in 2009 and extended to make the enhanced grant available to more landowners. While grants were tightly targeted within the project boundaries, other project activities were less restricted. In particular, audiences for project activities were drawn from a wider area beyond the project boundaries to increase the project’s impact. Project officers and

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volunteers also provided management advice and surveys across this wider area, and throughout South East England. In this report the analysis and discussion of project impacts is based on activities and management results from within the three extended landscape boundaries. Throughout this report we use the term Ancient Woodland to include both Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland (ASNW, land that has been continuously wooded since at least 1600 AD) and Ancient Replanted Woodland (ARW, also known as Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites), the latter being former ASNW that has been felled and replaced with planted trees (Spencer & Kirby 1992). The area and location of Ancient Woodland used in the analysis of this project is derived from the Ancient Woodland Inventory for England provisional dataset managed by Natural England, and does not include woodlands under 2ha. Denge Woods This demonstration landscape is situated in the Kent Downs AONB and was a mosaic landscape of woodland on clay plateaus, and chalk grassland on steeper slopes with arable, grazing and settlements in the valley bottoms. The target species in the Denge Woods were the Duke of Burgundy, Dingy Skipper and Grizzled Skipper, which occupy woodland clearings and rides as well as open grassland and scrub habitats within the woodland matrix. In addition, management of chalk grassland areas also contributed to the conservation of the Black-veined Moth, Siona lineata, the entire UK population of which lay within the extended project area. The initial project area was set at 11,121ha, and extended in 2009 to give a total project area of 31,253 ha. A total of 4,378 ha (14%) of the project area consisted of Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland or Ancient Replanted Woodland. Rother Woods The Rother Woods landscape is situated in East Sussex within the High Weald AONB and is a mosaic landscape of meadows, hedgerows and mixed woodland fragments on sandstone ridges between broad river valleys. The target species in this landscape were the Grizzled Skipper, which occupies a handful of woodland sites in the area, and the Dingy Skipper, which occurs on some grassland and brownfield sites. An additional target species, the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, was confirmed as extinct in the area during the project, so effort was directed at creating sufficient habitat for this species to consider a reintroduction. The initial Rother Woods project area was set at 13,818 ha in 2007, and significantly extended in 2009 to give a total project area of 34,945 ha. This is a particularly heavily wooded landscape, containing 13,435 ha (38% of the project area) of Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland or Ancient Replanted Woodland. Tytherley Woods This demonstration landscape lies between Salisbury and the Test Valley at King’s Somborne, straddling the Wiltshire/Hampshire border. This rural landscape comprises a mosaic of semi-natural habitats including ancient semi-natural broadleaf woodland, unimproved chalk downland and the neutral meadows of the Test Valley, and is dotted with small villages. This landscape is one of the richest areas for butterflies in southern England, containing populations of all seven of the target species: Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Duke of Burgundy, Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper, Drab Looper and Argent & Sable. The initial project area was set at 15,564 ha in 2007 and extended slightly in 2009 to a total area of 17,363 ha. The boundary of the Tytherley Woods landscape was expanded to include a cluster of coppiced hazel woodlands that were known to be important for butterflies, but was not increased by as much as the other two landscapes. Instead a smaller landscape focus allowed the management of this area to be monitored in more detail, as reported in section 4. The expanded Tytherley Woods landscape included 2186 ha of Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland or Ancient Replanted Woodland (13% of the total landscape area).

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Figure 1: The South East Woodlands Project: demonstration landscapes.

Tytherley

Woods Denge

Woods

Rother Woods

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2.3 Project staff A full-time project officer was employed to coordinate action in each of the three demonstration areas for three years. The Tytherley Woods Project Officer was Dr Kate Dent, the Rother Woods Project Officer was Steve Wheatley and the Denge Woods Project Officer was Fran Thompson. The project manager, Dr Dan Hoare, worked three days per week for 3.5 years to deliver the project and provide advice at additional woodland sites across the region. The departure of project officers to other employment led to restructuring in the final year of the project. Caroline Kelly and Laura McLellan were employed as project officers working on all aspects of the project at a regional level, including producing resources and assessing project results. In addition, forestry consultant Hugh Milner was contracted to carry out a land management advisory role in the Tytherley Woods area during 2010. Local Partnership Groups, consisting of representatives of the project partners for each demonstration landscape, met annually in each project landscape to monitor progress, ensure effective communication between project partners and agree future actions. Project officers produced an annual report to inform this meeting and provided additional feedback to project participants throughout the year.

2.4 Activities and audiences Project activities were focused on, but not exclusively limited too, the three demonstration landscapes. In order to achieve the project’s objectives, four levels of engagement were used: 1. Introductory Events. Aimed at the general public and audiences new to environmental conservation, introductory guided walks and public events were arranged to promote butterflies and moths as an interesting and valuable part of our woodland heritage. Events included visits to woodland sites, indoor talks to community groups and activities with school groups. 2. Volunteer Training Workshops. To encourage new and existing volunteers to develop their skills in conservation. The aim was to leave a legacy of volunteers, working with both Butterfly Conservation and other organisations, who would be better informed about the needs of woodland butterflies and moths and could continue their involvement in conservation action after the end of the funded project. The project supported the formation of local volunteer groups called Woodland Guardians. 3. Management Workshops. For land managers, private owners, agency staff and

volunteers. These events provided opportunities to demonstrate management techniques and share practical experience for anyone involved in woodland management. 4. Site Advice Visits. Detailed management advice was provided to individual woodlands in

key strategic locations to re-establish networks of woodland habitat. Project officers passed on advice on how sites could be improved and in many cases provided help with implementing management work. This included assisting with applications for management grants and environmental stewardship, writing management plans or even running volunteer work parties to deliver habitat improvements.

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2.5 Habitat management One of the project’s key aims was to promote woodland management. With little baseline information available on how much management was taking place in these landscapes, we did not set specific targets for the area of woodland to come into new management. Instead, we set the following broad targets:

to provide conservation advice to at least 120 landowners/managers;

to ensure that by the end of the project 80% of the woodland across the three landscapes was under favourable management for lepidoptera (was being managed to create habitats appropriate for the target species). Based on the original landscape boundaries this was equivalent to 4,914ha of woodland.

To assess our progress towards this target and to measure the overall impact of our activities, in each landscape we assessed woodland management activity and habitat condition for the target species at the start and end of the project for all holdings where access was possible (see section 4 for further details and results). We supported specific management targeted at creating habitat for butterflies and moths, but also encouraged general increases in sustainable woodland management that might incidentally create suitable habitat for butterflies, moths and other wildlife. This included improving woodland infrastructure (such as access tracks, gates and wood processing areas) that would make long-term woodland management more economically viable. In addition, in all three project landscapes we emphasised deer management as an issue, highlighting potential threats to forestry and biodiversity through increasing deer pressure and working with The Deer Initiative to recommend and implement deer control. We held workshops in deer management and helped set up a local deer management group for landowners in the Tytherley Woods landscape. Habitat management was supported through five main funding sources, and we distinguished between these when assessing the primary mechanism supporting new management: Economic forestry

Wherever possible the project sought to improve woodland habitat condition through economic forestry, the most sustainable method of funding woodland management, including the sale of timber, firewood, woodchip, charcoal and other coppice products. We did not directly buy or sell woodland products but encouraged economic forestry where appropriate by helping woodland owners to access markets for their products, providing links to woodland agents and the forestry sector, running workshops on coppice management, harvesting and woodfuel, and producing management plans to assist owners in harvesting their wood sustainably. We were not able to measure direct effects of our activity on economic forestry, but we did record where this was the primary source of funding for management. Forestry Commission grants Forestry Commission England was a major partner in the project, allocating more than £550,000 across the three project areas through the English Woodland Grant Scheme between 2007 and 2013. This included a special Woodland Improvement Grant (BIO80 WIG) targeted at the demonstration landscapes, paying 80% of standard costs compared to the 50% rate available across the region. FCE Woodland Officers (and Forest Enterprise staff in the Denge Woods landscape) worked closely with the project officers to develop grant applications, usually through Woodland Improvement Grants (WIGs), Woodland Planning Grants and Woodland Maintenance Grants. Project officers worked through woodland agents and managers, or directly with woodland owners, to agree habitat

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improvements that could be funded by eWGS, and in many cases drafted grant applications on behalf of the owner. Direct funding for woodland habitat improvements Butterfly Conservation sought additional external funding to support major habitat improvements at sites in each of the demonstration areas, primarily through the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF, formerly the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme). This was targeted at sites where eWGS funding was not available or where additional activity was needed to secure populations of highly threatened species. We delivered one LCF project in each demonstration landscape during the course of the South East Woodlands project raising a total of £136,349 to implement specific management for threatened butterflies. SITA Trust supported one project in the Tytherley Woods targeting Pearl-bordered Fritillaries and another project in the Rother Woods targeting Grizzled Skipper. The latter project included additional funding from the High Weald AONB Sustainable Development Fund. Biffaward supported a project in the Denge Woods focusing on habitat for the Duke of Burgundy. Natural England grants Grant aid from Natural England, through the Entry Level Stewardship and Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) schemes, was used to support management costs on some non-woodland habitats such as grassland and farmland. In particular this was a focus of effort in the Denge Woods landscape, where colonies of Duke of Burgundy and Black-veined Moth Siona lineata survive on chalk grassland alongside woodland colonies. The Denge Woods Project Officer and volunteers worked closely with Natural England staff to ensure that management prescriptions for sites in stewardship reflected the needs of the species (a tall but open and herb-rich sward with a high (>15% cover) scrub component) and brought additional sites into HLS schemes. Because these sites were not part of the core set of monitored woodlands the number of schemes and amount of funding was not monitored in detail, but they are included in the overall analysis of funding sources. Direct funding from landowners At some sites landowners were able to directly fund woodland management themselves, often with multiple aims that included improving woodland structure for forestry reasons, game management, recreation and access or conservation benefit. In addition to these funding sources, the project helped to deliver direct habitat management through more than 40 conservation work parties by volunteers. These usually focused on creating small amounts of high quality breeding habitat for the target species through scrub removal, coppicing, tree-felling and bracken management, and were often carried out within one or two kilometres of existing colonies of the target species. Because the areas of habitat created through this method were small, and the mechanism was not generally transferable to other sites, they were not included in habitat monitoring data.

2.6 Monitoring project impacts Woodland management The term ‘woodland management’ encompasses a wide range of activities with a variety of objectives, including forestry, habitat creation for conservation, access, game management and recreation, and often the decision to initiate management on a particular site is motivated by several of these objectives. Woodland management took place within our demonstration landscapes for a variety of reasons, and we did not attempt to assess whether management of a particular site was the direct result of our project activity. Instead we sought to assess the overall level of woodland management across the entire landscape, on multiple sites, to which our activities contributed. We monitored management activity (see below) at the level of ‘sites’, which in most cases followed ownership boundaries (i.e. a site constitutes all the woodland belonging to an individual owner), or, for large ownerships, where distinct blocks of woodland were surrounded by non-woodland habitats.

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In 2007 and 2010 project officers classified each site as ‘Managed’ or ‘Unmanaged’ according to information on management activity provided by the landowner or the Forestry Commission, and whether or not there were visual signs of active management taking place within the last three years (2005-07 for the summer 2007 assessment, 2008-2010 for the autumn 2010 assessment). The 2007 assessment therefore recorded whether management was already underway when the project started, and the 2010 assessment recorded management that took place during the project. Woodland was classed as ‘Managed’ if there was evidence of any of the following having taken place within the last three years: ride management (including swiping, mowing, widening or bracken management), ride creation, coppicing (with or without removal of standards), thinning, clear-felling or selective felling. Woodland was classed as ‘Unmanaged’ if there was no evidence of any of these activities having taken place within the last three years. In almost all cases it was possible to make this classification based on the height and density of regrowth of scrub and coppice species. If errors in this classification occurred (for example because deer browsing suppressed regrowth making sites look like they had been managed more recently), we are likely to have overestimated the number of ‘Managed’ woods. However, we made every effort to corroborate these classifications by seeking information from woodland owners. We were only able to monitor sites where we could derive information on the extent of woodland management both at the start of the project in 2007 and at the end of the last full year of the project in 2010, so only a sample of the woods in each landscape were assessed. In some cases where access was secured late on in the project, we were able to interpret signs of recent woodland management and assign sites to a particular management class accordingly. At the start of the project in 2007, all sites within the original landscape boundaries to which we could gain access were monitored. When each landscape boundary was expanded in 2009, we selected a subset of new sites to monitor, and retrospectively assigned them to management classes based on information provided by landowners. As a result, monitored sites were not evenly distributed through the landscape (see maps in section 4). Monitored sites included both Ancient Woodland and non-ancient woodland. We did not use a minimum area to distinguish woodland sites, but we excluded hedgerows or stands of trees less than 20m wide. Note that we assessed all management on monitored sites within the project landscapes, whether or not the project was involved in putting that management in place. Habitat condition

As well as recording the presence or absence of management, we gave each site a ‘Habitat Condition’ score in 2007 and 2010 based on an assessment of the habitat features present. We allocated each site to Habitat Condition on a 1-5 scale from Very Poor (1 - no suitable open habitat features of any kind) to Excellent (5 – containing a range of habitat features

known to be important for woodland butterflies and moths) – see Table 1 for full details. These features were selected to cover the broad habitat features needed by a wide range of woodland butterflies and moths. Only those sites classified as Excellent or Good hold habitat suitable for the seven target species that were the main focus of management activity in the project landscapes. Intermediate sites may hold suitable habitat for a range of commoner woodland butterflies and moths, particularly those that can use shadier, closed-canopy woodlands. Where there was insufficient information to assign a woodland site to one of these categories (for example because no access permission was granted), the site was classified as ‘Unknown’. This Habitat Condition classification according to the presence or absence of certain features was based on the assessment of trained project staff, and reflected habitat features readily agreed upon by staff in the field during trial visits. It was therefore easy to carry out this simple habitat classification exercise alongside site advisory visits with land managers without the need for additional monitoring. It thus provided a simple but repeatable technique

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for assessing the suitability of a wood for Lepidoptera, as well as helping to prioritise sites in need of management intervention. These Habitat Condition scores were chosen to reflect the broad habitat features needed by the target species but as they reflect features generated by woodland management (ride management and forestry operations generating some open space) they also function as a slightly more detailed assessment of the level of management taking place. Note that a woodland site could be in good condition even if it had no active management within the last three years, if natural processes such as deer and rabbit grazing were maintaining previously managed open space. Table 1. Habitat Condition for Lepidoptera.

Habitat Condition Category Explanation

Excellent

This is the best condition a wood can achieve in terms of habitat features for Lepidoptera within the project area. All of the following features are present: a network of wide (>15m wide), interconnected rides; at least two ‘zones’ or vegetation heights within the ride edge, indicating rotational management; temporary open space (includes rotational management such as clearfells, coppicing or selective felling at the ride edge) or permanent open space such as low nutrient grassland or grazed clearings); a wide variety of native broadleaved trees and shrubs.

Good

Woodland contains at least three of the above habitat features. These sites include some open space and rides, providing habitat for some of the habitat specialist woodland butterflies.

Intermediate

Limited suitable habitat space for Lepidoptera, containing only one or two of the above habitat features. For example a continuous mature canopy with scrub understorey, a few paths and edges, or a good wide ride network through poor condition woodland.

Poor

Contains none of the target habitat features. Poor condition woodland with limited suitable habitat e.g. dark birch woodland with a few edges, any paths heavily shaded.

Very Poor

Contains none of the target habitat features. No suitable habitat for any butterflies. The poorest condition we could expect to find in the area, for example dense conifer plantation or entirely closed-canopy broadleaved woodland with no open rides.

Unknown No information on habitat condition. Unable to access site or establish contact with landowner or manager

Tytherley Woods habitat mapping

In all three project landscapes we monitored woodland management and habitat condition at the level of whole woodland sites. To examine the results of project activity in more detail, in the Tytherley Woods we mapped the actual extent of management (‘patches’) and recorded the type of management activity, between 2007 and 2010 for a subset of nine key sites, including several large ownership holdings consisting of multiple woodland fragments. This patch mapping was based on a combination of site visits to record management on the ground and discussions with landowners and managers, as well as information on eWGS schemes supplied by FCE.

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The location of managed patches was recorded with a handheld Garmin GPSmap 60CSx. Each managed patch was then assessed for habitat suitability for two of the Tytherley Woods landscape target species, Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy, using a DAFOR scale of key habitat requirements (see Table 2). A structured zigzag walk through the whole managed patch was carried out, stopping every 20 paces and recording the abundance of the key vegetation characteristics for each species within a 2 metre square using the DAFOR scale. Table 2. DAFOR scale for suitable habitat based on vegetation characteristics

DAFOR Code Percentage cover

within 2m square

Explanation

D (Dominant) >75% Suitable habitat dominant

A (Abundant) 51-75% Suitable habitat commonly occurring

F (Frequent) 26-50% Suitable habitat always in view

O (Occasional) 11-25% A few patches of suitable habitat present

R (Rare) 1-10% Suitable habitat rare in 2m square

N (None) 0 No suitable habitat found in 2m square

Suitable habitat for Pearl-bordered Fritillary was defined as: Violet spp. growing in combination with

dry litter (dead bracken litter, leaf litter from broadleaved trees, or wood debris). Suitable habitat for Duke of Burgundy was defined as: Primula species growing in a lush, upright growth form in sheltered conditions.

For nine sites across the Tytherley landscape, totaling 207 management patches, it was then possible to calculate the total area managed, and the total area suitable for Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy. Species monitoring Because of the scale of the project landscapes and the number of sites involved we were not able to systematically monitor species responses to management on every site. We did attempt to monitor all known and potential sites for the target species in each landscape, to allow us to assess their responses to management change. Due to the difficulty of monitoring short-lived woodland habitats with transect methods (Pollard and Yates, 1993), in most cases we carried out timed counts or maximum counts at the peak of the adult flight period for each species (Liley et al., 2004). In addition, every year we monitored in detail each habitat patch resulting from LCF grants in the three project areas. With the help of volunteers we carried out general butterfly and moth surveys on as many sites as possible, concentrating on those sites where we found suitable habitat for the target species. Survey results and a summary of project activities were provided to each landowner and to project volunteers. Results were used to inform future management recommendations as well as being passed on to county and national recording schemes.

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Project data were plotted and analysed against the British National Grid using a geographical information system (MapInfo 8.0, MapInfo Corporation 2005). Distances and areas were calculated using Cartesian distance.

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3. Results: Activities and Participation

The project delivered a total of 486 events to a combined audience of 6827 people. Project activities and participation are presented below under the four different levels of engagement for all events between July 2007 and December 2010, and are summarised in Table 2. Both the number of events and number of participants are conservative estimates, as project staff and volunteers also promoted the project and its aims at a number of additional events organised by, or in conjunction with, other organisations, which are not reported here. In addition, project staff contributed to other Butterfly Conservation events outside South East England. Note that as some individuals attended multiple events, numbers do not represent total number of unique participants – we estimate that there were at least 5000 individual participants overall. While the project focused effort on the three demonstration landscapes, 15% of project events were delivered elsewhere in South East England. Table 2. Participation in South East Woodlands Project events

Denge Rother Tytherley Wider region Total

Eve

nts

Pe

op

le

Eve

nts

Pe

op

le

Eve

nts

Pe

op

le

Eve

nts

Pe

op

le

Eve

nts

Pe

op

le

Introductory Events

53 1960 22 849 16 1113 91 3922

Volunteer Training

20 315 27 521 34 235 13 340 94 1411

Land Management Workshops

8 95 11 333 6 130 14 353 39 911

Site advice visits for land managers

92 64 72 60 52 25 45 39 261 188

National Woodland Conference

1 395 1 395

Totals 173 2434 132 1763 108 1503 73 1127 486 6827

The number of events, and the audiences involved, varied markedly between each landscape. This was due to a combination of factors, including the nature of the landscape, the existing audiences already active in each area, the aptitudes of each project officer to particular methods of engaging with an audience, and the conservation priorities agreed in each area. These differences are explored in more detail in the following sections and in section 7.

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3.1 Introductory Events Introductory events aimed to raise public awareness of the threats facing woodland wildlife, to encourage an understanding of the links between active woodland management and biodiversity, to increase butterfly and moth recording in the area and to recruit new volunteers for conservation action. They were largely aimed at new audiences who were not members of Butterfly Conservation but lived in or near the demonstration landscapes. These events included guided butterfly walks on woodland sites, indoor talks, moth trapping in woodlands, gardens and school grounds, school visits, barbecues promoting local charcoal and ‘Woodland Celebration Events’ which aimed to attract larger public audiences. In total 91 introductory events were held, with 3922 people taking part. In the Denge Woods, project officer Fran Thompson was able to deliver a particularly high number of events to a very large audience through a series of online lessons and question and answer sessions with school children across Kent. Similarly in the Rother Woods, a programme of moth trapping events at schools in the area allowed the project officer Steve Wheatley to provide information on moths and other woodland wildlife to hundreds of schoolchildren – 1/3 of the 849 people taking part in introductory events here were children. Figure 2. Examples of Introductory Events

Facepainting at Celebrate Wye’s Woods, 2010 National Moth Night 2010, Godmersham

A Denge Woods butterfly walk Meeting moths at the Rother Woods Big BBQ 2009

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Woodland Celebration Events In each project area additional large public events were organised to draw in wider audiences, inviting the community out into their local woods and involving local groups, conservation bodies and woodland workers. In the summer of 2009 each project area hosted barbecues with a local produce theme (using local food and charcoal), and over 260 people of all ages took part. Celebrate Wye’s Woods was another day of nature-related family fun in June 2010 at Wye National Nature Reserve, within the Denge Woods project area, attracting over 100 members of the public. Organised jointly with Natural England and Wye Community Farm, the event saw volunteers and staff from partner organisations lead people around this spectacular nature reserve, taking in magnificent views and exploring the chalk grassland and woodlands. Children enjoyed some of the marvellous moths volunteers had caught the night before on the reserve. Wicker-weaving proved very popular with giant colourful butterflies and flowers created, as did making butterfly kites and drawing with charcoal and chalk from the reserve. The barbecue used charcoal produced from timber coppiced on the nature reserve, and sausages from pigs kept by Wye Community Farm, the local group who help graze the nature reserve. Although these events were a great success, with only one member of staff organising them they were challenging to deliver. In addition, although assisted by willing volunteers, it proved hard to make effective contact with the large numbers of people taking part. Smaller events such as introductory walks and volunteer workshops proved a much more effective way of building up proper communication and getting the public actively involved in the project, and in subsequent years we switched to providing smaller, but more numerous, public events. Introductory events were designed as enjoyable ways to generate interest in our work, and many people attending them have gone on to get more deeply involved in the project in other ways, as illustrated in these examples from each area: Denge Woods Vanessa MacDonald attended the Public Forum at the start of the project to find out what it was about. Vanessa owns over 200 hectares of woodland and has subsequently undertaken significant works to benefit woodland butterflies, and hosted workshops for other landowners. Lesley Brown joined a butterfly walk at Wye NNR in July 2008, and has contributed to the project ever since, undertaking survey work at key sites, sharing the Bonsai Bank butterfly transect, helping with project administration and taking part in conservation work parties as a member of the Denge Duke Guardians group.

Simon Warry came to our first group moth trapping session in May 2008, and attended many further sessions. He subsequently bought his own generator and a second trap to allow him to continue trapping at a range of sites as well as his own garden. Rother Woods Jim Barrett responded to a notice at the entrance to the Forestry Commission’s Vinehall Forest where he walked his dog and has since gone on to volunteer more than 70 days to the project. He has undertaken butterfly and moth surveys of three different Forestry Commission sites (Vinehall, Battle Great Wood and Netherfield), providing valuable feedback and species data for the site managers. Jim is now a key member of the Rother Guardians volunteer group and has led guided walks for the general public and a staff workshop for British Gypsum, as well as being involved in monitoring several key sites, including a reintroduction site for the Pearl-bordered Fritillary.

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Tytherley Woods Colin Matthews (BC Hampshire & IOW Branch member) attended a project talk in 2008 and now helps walk a transect to monitor the National Trust’s Mottisfont Estate, a key site in the Tytherley landscape. As well as providing free advice to the National Trust warden to help with management decisions, Colin takes part in conservation tasks to open narrow rides and restore unmanaged coppice. Glynne Evans attended an introductory talk in Hampshire in 2008 and has run moth trapping events in the Mottisfont area ever since, recording several notable species for the area. Already a keen moth recorder, the project provided a focus for his recording and access to new sites, with his records helping to inform the future management of the estate. 3.2 Volunteer training A total of 94 volunteer events were held across the three landscapes and the wider South East Region, with 1411 taking part. This varied programme of free training workshops was designed to provide opportunities for people to learn new skills and get involved in active conservation work. It was aimed at people who’d never volunteered before, as well as existing volunteers already working with Butterfly Conservation or other organisations. Participants received training in a range of activities from butterfly and moth identification and monitoring techniques through to practical conservation skills, including certificated courses for first aid, brushcutter and chainsaw use. Volunteers taking part in the project went on to contribute over 1080 days worth of help with all aspects of the project, equivalent to £87,000 in labour costs. Much of this work was in surveying and monitoring specific sites on behalf of Butterfly Conservation, helping to assess the success of habitat management work and identify priorities for future conservation action by collecting a remarkable database of more than 60,000 butterfly and moth records. But volunteers also led guided walks, gave talks to community groups, passed on management advice to landowners, represented the project in land management meetings held by other organisations, and delivered direct habitat improvements through conservation work parties. In each landscape, volunteers were encouraged to set up local groups of ‘Woodland Guardians’, to provide a structure for volunteers who could continue their involvement in

conservation action after the initial project had finished. Although it is too early to assess the long-term legacy of these volunteers, many are certainly still involved in activities with Butterfly Conservation, supported by our branches of existing volunteers in each county. As with other aspects of the project, volunteer involvement has varied across the region. In the Tytherley Woods, although volunteers have not branded themselves as a Woodland Guardians group they have continued their involvement through activities with our existing Hampshire & Isle of Wight Branch, or with partner organisations such as the National Trust at Mottisfont and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust at Blackmoor Copse. In the Rother Woods, the Rother Guardians have continued to carry out woodland management tasks alongside the Small Woodland Owners’ Group which is active in the area, and get additional support from the Sussex Branch of Butterfly Conservation. The Rother Guardians continued surveys and conservation work parties throughout 2011, as well

as leading identification workshops for other volunteers. In the Denge Woods, volunteers have focused on the Duke of Burgundy butterfly through their work as the Duke Guardians. In 2010 and 2011, 21 volunteers carried out coordinated surveys of known and potential Duke of Burgundy sites in Kent. The Duke Guardians have delivered substantial habitat improvements at one of the butterfly’s core sites with a series of volunteer work parties, and their monitoring efforts provide vital information on how the species is reacting to the management put in place by the project (see section 6).

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Butterfly Conservation has volunteer branches active in each county in the region, able to provide ongoing support to new volunteers and offer further involvement in conservation action. A final project newsletter was sent to each project volunteer, providing contact details for local branches and relevant Butterfly Conservation staff, as well as details of county recording schemes. Both Butterfly Conservation local branches and the volunteer groups of partner organisations (the National Trust, High Weald AONB, Kent Downs AONB and the Wildlife Trusts) have been strengthened by new volunteers and by better communication between existing groups as a result of the project. As a result, the project has been able to both recruit new volunteers strengthen the existing volunteer networks, providing a legacy of more effective conservation action. Figure 3. Examples of volunteer training events

Rother Woods volunteers gather for a work party The Denge Duke Guardians ready for surveys

Training in chainsaw use Learning how to monitor butterflies

A Denge Woods identification workshop

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Volunteer feedback A survey was carried out in December 2010 to gather feedback from volunteers on their experiences of taking part in the project. A questionnaire was sent by email to a sample of 288 project contacts who had taken part in at least one event. 42 responses were received (14%), with response rates similar from the three project landscapes. Key points arising from these responses included:

69% of those taking part weren’t members of Butterfly Conservation, demonstrating that project involvement reached outside our normal volunteer base;

However 83% of people had previously volunteered with at least one other conservation organisation, so they were not an entirely new audience to wildlife conservation;

Species surveys were the most popular activity, with 88% taking part in these;

78% of people had volunteered with the project ‘on a regular basis’, although it is to be expected that regular volunteers might be more likely to respond to a questionnaire;

Satisfaction rates for project involvement were very high, with an average figure of 96%, and 90% had been encouraged to go on and learn more about butterflies, moths and woodland wildlife;

71% of people hoped to continue their voluntary efforts in the demonstration areas after the funded part of the project ended in 2011.

Additional comments included:

The project officers were praised for their excellent work improving communications between land owners and volunteers, and in organising people to work together;

Feedback and communication to both volunteers and landowners was excellent;

The local nature of the work was critical. People were more likely to get involved in events if they were close to home.

3.3 Management Workshops

The project delivered 39 woodland management workshops to an audience of 911 people including woodland owners, managers, forestry workers, land management advisors and conservation staff. This included 14 events outside the demonstration landscapes, helping to share information and experience about managing woodlands for wildlife to a much wider audience. These workshops were nearly all partnership events, with participation from a range of organisations including the Forestry Commission and the Deer Initiative. In many cases, workshops took place on privately owned land, providing a demonstration of the issues facing private owners, with advice and support available to link landowners up with grants for management, woodland workers and markets for their woodland products. Management techniques relevant to local conditions were demonstrated, with subjects ranging from coppicing, ride management and bracken control to deer management and implementing woodfuel systems. As a result of these workshops more than 900 land management professionals are now more aware of the requirements of butterflies, moths and other wildlife, and have been shown techniques that can provide wildlife habitats alongside productive management. Many of those who participated in these workshops subsequently invited project staff or partners to provide site specific management advice on their own woodlands, and in some cases went on to sign up for eWGS grants.

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3.4 Site Advice Visits Project staff made over 261 individual site advice visits to at least 188 separate sites belonging to landowners across the region, providing site specific advice to help owners and managers improve their woods for wildlife. This is in addition to any site visits made for monitoring purposes, and in addition to advice provided by other methods (which included by phone, email or letter, and through direct discussion with landowners at workshops and other events). We identified priority areas to focus these site visits within each landscape based upon existing colonies of the target species and a consideration of where new woodland management activity could make the greatest contribution to a landscape-scale network of open woodland habitats. In addition we responded to requests for site visits wherever possible within each landscape. In total the project provided conservation management advice through individual recommendations for at least 188 sites, including 39 sites across the wider region outside the project landscapes. Site specific advice was given for 149 sites within the demonstration landscapes, covering 9,344 ha of land including 7,959 ha of Ancient Woodland. Advice visits were carried out at 45 sites outside the three demonstration landscapes, including Surrey, West Sussex, the Isle of Wight, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Lincolnshire. These events helped to disseminate management advice more widely and promote the project and its aims, but the results of these visits are not included in the main analysis of project impacts in section 4. Each visit identified priorities for management on the site and helped managers to find ways to implement the necessary work, for example by highlighting opportunities for economic management or eWGS grant funding. These site visits were the main opportunity project staff had to influence the management of individual sites, and were crucial in providing the targeted advice, support and funding that brought sites into new management. Site visits were often conducted jointly with project partners, for example a Forestry Commission Woodland Officer, to share information and ideas and reduce the number of visits received by an individual owner. Project staff provided ecological information on the species being targeted, as well as offering practical management recommendations that complemented the work of the Woodland Officer. Without these visits, much of the habitat improvement work in each project area would not have taken place. Site visits offered an opportunity to provide site-specific habitat management advice, discuss opportunities and threats to active woodland management, bring together relevant agencies, and to coordinate management works across ownership boundaries to build an effective habitat network across the landscape. The number of site visits necessary to affect change varied between landscapes. In the Denge and Rother Woods a large number of visits were made overall, with few repeat visits to the same landowner, while in the Tytherley Woods project staff carried out fewer visits but made repeated visits to ensure management took place on a few key sites. This detailed and repeated advisory work, complemented by survey information that can help inform management decisions, would not be possible for Forestry Commission Woodland Officers who operate over larger areas with a range of objectives. 3.5 Woodland Conference

In March 2010 Butterfly Conservation organised a one-day conference, The Future of Wildlife in British Woodlands, to disseminate the project’s messages to a national audience. 395 people took part in a programme promoting the needs of a range of woodland wildlife including plants, birds, mammals and other invertebrates as well as butterflies and moths. Delegates consisted of representatives from academic research institutes, wildlife conservation organisations, volunteers, students and members of the public. The conference provided an opportunity to discuss how the contrasting needs of various wildlife groups can be incorporated into sustainable management, and to share the results of the South East Woodlands Project and other landscape scale initiatives with a wider audience.

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3.6 Interpretation materials and other resources The project produced a range of resources for woodland managers and other audiences, including: Project newsletters: Two or three newsletters were produced each year for each landscape, to provide information and highlight future events to all project contacts, including landowners, partner organisations and volunteers. Woodland management for butterflies and moths: a best practice guide (Hoare et al., 2011). One of the major project outputs, this book provides guidance on the woodland

habitat features needed by butterflies and moths, and how to create, maintain and improve them. With information relevant for the whole of the UK, and aimed at anyone involved in woodland management, more than 500 copies of the guide were given away free to landowners, woodland agents and land management professionals. Woodland butterflies: A brief guide. A simple introductory leaflet aimed at the general public, highlighting the link between woodland management and wildlife, and featuring a butterfly identification chart with information on species’ habitat requirements. Site interpretation materials: The project produced public interpretation panels for two sites (two panels at Bentley Wood in the Tytherley Woods project area, one at Butterfly Conservation’s Oaken Wood Reserve in Surrey). Other resources included events leaflets, training packs for volunteer and landowner workshops and exhibition display panels which were used to promote the project at public events such ad countryside shows and wood fairs. Website Butterfly Conservation hosted project web pages with an additional web address www.southeastwoodlands.org. to allow people to easily locate the project online. The site was used to provide contact details for project staff and to advertise events and project news. It was complemented by and linked to a range of local websites including those of Butterfly Conservation volunteer branches (Kent Branch, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Branch, and Sussex Branch). At the end of the project the pages were redesigned to highlight project outputs and provide downloadable resources such as factsheets on butterflies, moths and woodland management, as well as copies of talks from the 2010 woodland conference. Publicity material

Publicity material included articles in newspapers and magazines, and television interviews. Project Manager Dr Dan Hoare appeared on the BBC’s South Today in 2008 and Countryfile in 2009, and Dr Kate Dent appeared on the BBC’s Inside Out programme in 2009. Published articles included features in the popular lifestyle magazine Hampshire Life, an article promoting the woodland celebration event in Rother Woods in the Rye and Battle Observer, June 2009, and coverage of the Denge Woods project in the Kentish Gazette in August 2009. Local press coverage proved most successful in attracting people to direct involvement in the demonstration landscapes. National and regional coverage helped to raise the profile of the project and its themes, but produced much less direct involvement in project activities, as audiences were more widely distributed.

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4. Results: Habitat Improvements

Management took place on woodland sites across all three demonstration landscapes during the course of the project. To assess management change we monitored a subset of woodlands within each demonstration landscape totalling 10,891ha over 284 different sites (13% of the total combined landscape areas). This included 9243ha of Ancient Woodland on 250 sites (46% of all the Ancient Woodland within the three landscapes). This monitored subset of woodland included the 149 sites for which we gave site-specific management advice and many additional sites whose owners and managers took part in management workshops or received advice through our project partners. Because of the scale of the project and the complexity of the reasons behind landowners initiating management, it was not possible to say unequivocally whether the project was responsible for management taking place. Instead we recorded the principal funding source supporting management action on each site (Section 4.4). In the following analysis we refer to the individual units of woodland monitored as ‘sites’. In most cases this equates to woodland ownership boundaries (i.e. all the woodlands belonging to a single landowner), which is the level at which we provided management advice and tried to instigate management. The Tytherley Woods project landscape was smaller than the other two landscapes, with fewer individual site owners (32 across the monitored sites) and several large estates consisting of multiple woodland blocks in the same ownership (distinct woodland fragments separated by non-woodland habitats). Here we were able to subdivide ownerships into multiple ‘sites’ at a more detailed resolution, which also provided a comparable sample size of monitored sites (see below). Note that throughout these results percentage figures are presented as rounded up to the nearest whole number, and as a result the sum of these percentages may not always equal 100.

4.1 Changes in woodland management Table 3 presents the results of our assessments of woodland management status over the course of the project. Summary:

The area of woodland in management increased in all three project landscapes, although the percentage increase differed across the three areas. The total number of sites managed increased by 76% (90 sites) and the total area of woodland being managed increased by 31% (2471 ha);

Between 2007 and 2010 the proportion of woodland being managed (as a percentage of the total area monitored) increased by 23% (across all three landscapes, and the proportion of sites showing signs of active management (the percentage of monitored sites) increased by 31%;

At the end of the project, 73% of all monitored sites showed evidence of some management, accounting for 87% of the total woodland area monitored.

The Tytherley Woods saw the greatest percentage increase in area managed (28%), with 93% managed by 2010, although this landscape contained the least woodland overall;

The Rother Woods saw the greatest area of land coming into new management (1109ha), and contained the most woodland overall;

The Denge Woods saw the smallest percentage increase in managed area (17%), but already had the most woodland being managed at the start of the project. By 2010 a similar proportion (87%) of woodland was being managed here as in the other landscapes.

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Table 3. Landscape statistics and management results

Tytherley Woods Rother Woods Denge Woods Total Project

Initial project area (ha) 15564 13818 11121 40503

Extended project area (ha) 17363 34945 31253 83561

Area of Ancient Woodland (AW) in extended project area (ha)

2186 13435 4378 19999

Total area monitored (ha) 2521 4441 3929 10891

No. of sites monitored 98 108 78 284

% of total landscape area monitored 15 13 13 13

Mean woodland size (ha) 26 41 50 38

Median woodland size (ha) 9 22 19 17

Area of AW monitored (ha) 2000 3861 3382 9243

No. of sites containing AW 68 107 75 250

Managed 2007 total ha 1647 2633 2777 7056

% of total area monitored 65 59 71 65

Managed 2007 no. of sites 43 49 26 118

% of monitored sites 44 45 33 42

Managed 2010 total ha 2343 3742 3442 9528

% of total area monitored 93 84 88 87

Managed 2010 no. of sites 75 88 45 208

% of monitored sites 77 81 58 73

Total area coming into management (ha) 697 1109 666 2471

% increase in area managed 42 42 23 35

% increase in proportion of monitored woodland under management

28 25 17 23

Number of sites coming into management 32 39 19 90

% increase in number of sites managed 74 80 73 76

% increase in proportion of sites managed 33 36 24 31

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Sites already being managed at the start of the project were larger than average (mean size of managed woods in 2007 was 60ha compared to 38ha for all woods). We reduced this difference during the course of the project as many smaller woods were brought into management (mean size of managed woods in 2010 was 46ha, and the mean size of woods coming into new management was 26ha).

Interpretation Overall, the project was successful in its major aim of increasing the amount of woodland management within these demonstration landscapes, in terms of both woodland area and number of sites. Because management was assessed at a relatively coarse scale (whole sites, or ownerships), an increase in area managed could be due to a few large sites coming into management. This was not the case, however, as the number of sites in which management took place also increased substantially (by 31%), and the size of woods coming into new management was below average. Ancient Woodland sites are particularly valuable for wildlife (Forestry Commission England, 2005), including butterflies and moths (Clarke et al., 2011). Looking just at the Ancient Woodland across the three landscapes, the proportion of woodland area being managed increased by 23% during the project (In 2007 66% of AW, by area, was managed, in 2010 89% was managed). This met our broad target that 80% of the woodland area should be brought into management. Section 4.3 provides more information on the habitat condition produced by this management. By the end of the project 73% of sites had received some form of management within the previous three years. This means that 27% of sites (accounting for 13% of the woodland area) still had virtually no active management at the end of the project, so wildlife associated with unmanaged woodland is still well provided for in these landscapes. In addition, our aim was to promote active management to increase the amount of permanent and temporary open space as part of a diverse woodland structure. The retention of areas of woodland with low (or no) management intervention, both within and between holdings was a key part of this landscape scale approach. Implementing management at the landscape scale means that there is less pressure to create a given habitat on a particular site, as there will be other opportunities to provide that habitat on neighbouring sites. For example, on the National Trust’s Mottisfont Estate in the Tytherley Woods, Barbastelle bat (Barbastella barbastellus)

is a notified feature of the sites SSSI status and a European protected species under Annex IV of the Habitats Directive (1992). This species requires ancient deciduous woodland with a dense understorey, so the need for extensive areas of low intervention woodland was combined across this large site with opportunities to widen rides and resume coppicing hazel to provide more open habitats. The fact that Pearl-bordered Fritillary formerly coexisted on this site (before management levels declined in the late 1990s) with Barbastelle bats shows that contrasting habitat requirements for different threatened species can be accommodated with careful planning. As well as increasing the amount of woodland in management, the project aimed to influence the distribution of management across each demonstration area, to provide better connections between open habitats and the species that use them (the target species identified in Section 2.2., including Pearl-bordered Fritillary). Figure 4 shows how changes in woodland management were distributed across each landscape. Each landscape included at least one ‘core site’: a major woodland holding where the Lepidoptera interest was relatively well-known and at least some woodland management was already in place. In all three landscapes the change from unmanaged or unknown management to active management started with smaller sites surrounding the core sites before broadening out to include more remote sites.

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Figure 4: Maps of a) Tytherley Woods, b) Rother Woods and c) Denge Woods showing Managed (green) and Unmanaged/Unknown (red) woodlands in 2007 and 2010 a)

29

b)

30

c)

31

Efforts to increase management activity were not random across the landscape. To some extent management intervention was opportunistic, as project officers responded to land managers they met during the course of the project. However, we made particular efforts to contact land managers and initiate management at sites if they had a recent history of supporting priority species (i.e. evidence that management could produce the required habitat) or were within close proximity to sites already holding priority species (4km for Pearl-bordered Fritillary, 5km for Duke of Burgundy). The patterns of management change took place in different ways in the three demonstration landscapes. In the Tytherley Woods several large woodland holdings, including the central Bentley Wood holding, were already receiving some management in 2007. The increase in management (33% increase in sites managed, 28% by area) was focused on many of the smaller sites surrounding Bentley Wood in the centre of the project area, aiming to create a network of open habitats. The Rother Woods saw new management initiated at both large and small sites, including large woodland sites in the west of the project area and a network of interlinked smaller sites in the east. This landscape saw the largest increase in the proportion of sites being managed (36%), with 81% of monitored sites being managed by the end of the project. In the Denge Woods, in 2007 only 33% of sites were being managed, with a few large sites (mostly in Forestry Commission ownership) increasing the proportion of woodland by area that was classified as managed (71%). As a result, this landscape saw the smallest proportional increase in management (24% of sites, a 17% increase by area), with effort targeted at several smaller sites to form a network of open woodland habitat across the centre of the project area. This effort focused around areas already occupied by the Duke of Burgundy, one of the main target species in this landscape. Detailed mapping of management patches in the Tytherley Woods landscape As noted above, entire sites were classified as managed if they contained even a small

amount of coppicing or ride management, for example. To examine the true extent of management activity in more detail, we mapped every management patch for nine key sites in the Tytherley Woods landscape in spring 2011. Across these sites, the total area of woodland actually being managed was 106 ha, consisting of 207 different habitat patches within a combined site area of 1232 ha (9% of the total woodland area, see Table 4). Therefore even within these managed sites, less than 10% of the woodland was actually open, early succession habitat at any time during the three years of the project. Note that this is not all permanent open space such as rides and clearings, but includes temporary space resulting from coppicing, clearfells and rotational ride edge management. At Bentley Wood for example, perhaps the single best woodland site for butterflies in England, thriving populations of many of our rarest woodland species (including Pearl-bordered Fritillary) are supported on about 6% of the total woodland area (see Table 4). This figure is in line with values for the amount of open space in Bentley Wood derived separately by the site Forester, David Lambert, who has estimated it at less than 10% (pers comm.). We also used a structured walk through each managed patch to estimate the area of breeding habitat for Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy. It should be noted that this applied a rather strict definition of breeding habitat based on our experience of high quality habitat from other sites, and is thus likely to have omitted some marginal habitat (for example where violets are sparse but Pearl-bordered Fritillary do breed occasionally) and be an underestimate of the total breeding area. The results of this assessment, shown in Table 4, emphasize that even within open, managed patches that are broadly suitable for the target species (and might form the ‘flight area’ within which adult butterflies are recorded), on

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average only just over 21% of the patch is actually suitable for breeding (egg-laying and larval development). This emphasises that threatened woodland butterflies and moths can thrive when even a small proportion of the woodland landscape is managed as open habitat on rotation, as long as the habitat produced is of high quality. In the Tytherley landscape, which remains one of the national strongholds for the Pearl-bordered Fritillary only around 9% of the total site area was managed during the three years of the study, and less than 2% of the total site area provided high quality breeding habitat for the butterfly. It is important to note that much of the woodland (90% or more) within these landscapes remained relatively mature and unmanaged during the project, providing habitat for a wide range of other wildlife that prefers low intervention, darker woodlands.

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Table 4. Detailed assessment of management patches for nine sites in the Tytherley Woods

Site

Number of managed patches

(2007-2010)

Total site area (ha)

Total managed area (ha)

% of total site area

Area suitable for Pearl-bordered Fritillary (ha)*

% of total managed

area

Area suitable for Duke of Burgundy

(ha)*

% of total managed

area

Bentley Wood 72 675.1 38.2 6 8.7 23 4.1 11

Blackmoor Copse 22 36.7 2.9 8 0.6 21 0.4 14

Hazel Hill Wood 6 31.3 2.2 7 0.4 18 0.1 5

Heath House Estate 23 76.2 11.5 15 2.2 19 1.8 16

Hound Wood 10 157.8 13.8 9 3.7 27 2.2 16

Mottisfont Estate 27 121.9 8.0 7 1.5 19 0.6 8

Ridge’s Grove 2 9.5 3.7 39 1.4 38 1.4 38

Somborne Estate 34 86.9 22.7 26 4 18 3.9 17

Upper Frenchmoor Copse

11 36.3 2.8 8 0.1 4 0.1 4

Total 207 1231.7 105.8 9 22.6 21 14.6 14

* Areas suitable for Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy were assessed using a DAFOR method outlined in section 2.6. This used strict criteria for the frequency of vegetation characteristics known to be important for breeding habitat in these species. It is not equivalent to flight areas for the species, which are often considerably larger and include non-breeding habitat, but were not assessed in this study.

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4.2 Woodland management activity At monitored sites across all three landscapes, coppicing and ride management were the most frequent types of management (Figure 5). Thinning and selective felling (clearing trees from only part of a particular compartment, often along a ride edge to create open habitat) were also common. Clear felling (removing trees from across an entire plantation at once) was very infrequent, despite the fact that this can produce very favourable habitat for scarce woodland butterflies (in the short term at least). This is consistent with best practice guidance on the restoration of PAWS (plantations on ancient woodland sites) which recommends a gradual transition to native woodland though ‘continuous cover’ forestry, in which some canopy trees are retained on a site at all times to maintain woodland conditions (Thompson et al., 2003). There were no major differences between management techniques used across the three landscapes, although clear felling was more frequent in the Tytherley Woods, where extensive conifer plantations are being removed to create bare ground habitat for butterflies and birds such as Tree Pipit Anthus trivialis. Figure 5. Frequency of management type (2001-2010) across all monitored sites

Cle

ar Fel

ling

Coppic

ing

Rid

e Cre

atio

n

Rid

e M

anag

emen

t

Sel

ectiv

e Fel

ling

Thinnin

g

Fellin

g Oth

er

Percentage of monitored sites

Ride management was a popular management technique because it is a relatively simple and cheap way to introduce a network of interconnected open space into a woodland. Land managers can widen existing rides and create bays or scallops without altering existing thinning and felling schedules for crop trees. Ride work can also improve access for forestry and frequently meets other objectives such as game management or deer control. Well-structured rides are of particular value for woodland wildlife as they provide a range of habitats from short grass and bare ground through to scrub and mature trees, and their linear, interconnected nature allows many species (particularly butterflies) to use them for movement and dispersal though the wood (Clarke et al. 2011; Ferris & Carter 2000). Coppicing was once a major part of the woodland economy, and despite a decline of about 90% in the area of coppice in Britain during the 20th century (Harmer & Howe 2003) it proved a popular management technique as part of this project. We promoted coppicing because it is one of the best techniques for providing habitat for our target butteflies and moths (Clarke et al 2011) but also because improving woodfuel markets have made it more

5

24

44

15

45

20

9

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economically viable in recent years. In the Rother and Denge landscapes, Sweet Chestnut and Hornbeam were the predominant coppice species, providing both timber and firewood, while in the Tytherley Woods Hazel coppice with oak standards produced hurdles, faggots and fencing materials. In most cases, grants were provided to cut derelict, uneconomic coppice, to fence coppice to prevent deer damage, or to assist with infrastructure such as tracks and stacking areas to facilitate coppicing.

Thinning is an important crop management tool, and was usually carried out as a commercial forestry operation, or as part of PAWS restoration. In most cases it contributed only marginal habitat for our target species, which tend to need more extensive open ground, although heavy thinning at the ride edge did produce Pearl-bordered Fritillary habitat at Bentley Wood in the Tytherley landscape.

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4.3 Habitat Condition We examined woodland habitat condition for Lepidoptera at the start and end of the project, classifying woodland sites according to the presence of key habitat features used by the target species (Figure 6 and Table 5). Only those sites classified as Excellent or Good hold sufficient open habitat to support the seven target species that were the main focus of management activity in the project landscapes. We assessed habitat condition for 247 sites, covering a total of 10,610ha.

Of these monitored sites, 160 sites (65%, covering 5782ha) improved in condition during the project, 5 (2%, covering 106ha) declined in condition and 82 (33%, covering 4722ha) remained unchanged. Some sites declined in condition because temporary open space present at the start of the project had become overgrown by the end of the project due to lack of further management.

81 (83%) of the 97 sites that came into management (unmanaged in 2007 but managed in 2010) improved in condition, and none declined.

Across all three landscapes, the proportion of woodlands in Good or Excellent

condition for Lepidoptera (measured by area at the level of woodland sites) increased by 33% during the project.

The total area of woodland in Good or Excellent condition increased by 108% during

the project (3279ha in 2007, 6807ha in 2010).

By 2010, 62% of the woodland area (6578 ha) was in at least Good condition, and only 10% in Poor condition, demonstrating that this approach can improve habitat conditions for Lepidoptera across a very wide area.

Figure 6. Changes in habitat condition (% of woodland area in each condition) between 2007 and 2010 for all three project landscapes combined.

Excellent

2007 2010

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Table 5. Habitat condition change in South East Woodlands demonstration landscapes.

Condition trend Tytherley Woods Rother Woods Denge Woods All sites

No. of sites

% of sites

Area (ha)

No. of sites % of sites

Area (ha)

No. of sites % of sites

Area (ha)

No. of sites

% of sites

Area (ha)

Improving 64 83 1238 61 57 2475 35 56 2068 160 65 5782

Unchanged 13 17 1169 43 40 1886 26 41 1667 82 33 4722

Declining 0 0 0 3 3 69 2 3 37 5 2 106

Total 77 2407 107 4430 63 3772 247 10610

Habitat Condition* % of monitored area in each condition category (ha)

2007 2010 2007 2010 2007 2010 2007 2010

Excellent 27 27 0 11 0 26 6 20

Good 0 31 17 45 47 47 24 42

Intermediate 44 34 48 36 23 14 38 28

Poor 6 3 34 8 24 8 24 7

Very Poor 0 0 1 0 2 1 1 0

Unknown 23 5 0 0 4 4 7 3

*Project officers assigned a habitat condition to each woodland site on a 1-5 scale from Very Poor (no suitable open habitats of any kind) to Excellent (Containing all five of the following features: wide interconnecting rides; two- or three-zone ride management; temporary open space; permanent open space; a variety of native broadleaf tree species), or scored sites as Unknown. Only those sites classified as Excellent or Good hold habitat suitable for the seven target species that were the main focus of management activity in the project landscapes. See section 2.6 for more detail on condition categories.

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Figures 7-9 demonstrate how these changes in habitat condition were distributed across each landscape, affecting the suitability of the landscape for butterflies and moths. Improvements in habitat condition were achieved both at ‘core sites’, usually large woodlands managed by partner organisations that had been identified as priorities very early in the project, and on many smaller sites, often in private ownership. It is important to note that some sites classified as in Poor condition in 2010 may since have initiated management, and at other sites management was not appropriate at this time (for example because of land use objectives or concerns for other wildlife). The aim of these maps is not to single-out particular sites (core sites are labelled to help demonstrate targeting) but to illustrate how a sustained initiative promoting management can deliver habitat improvements at a landscape-scale. Habitat condition in the Tytherley Woods (Figure 7). 84% of sites improved in condition during the project, covering 1238ha. This constitues a higher proportion improving than in the other landscapes but accounting for a smaller area of land. This reflects a highly focused approach to management advice in the Tytherley landscape, with effort directed at smaller sites around the core woodlands. The central Bentley Woods complex (managed by the Bentley Wood Trust and identified as a core site during project development) remained in Excellent condition throughout the project, and

indeed many areas within this site were enhanced through further management. An additional 31% of the woodland (by area) was brought into Good condition by implementing targeted management, both in the central sites surrounding Bentley Wood, and in private woodland sites in the northeast of the landscape, which are managed as hazel coppice with standards. Note that although several sites in the complex were in Unknown condition in 2007, once assessed they were found to be in either Poor or Intermediate condition for Lepidoptera (i.e. the overall improvement in condition was real, not an artefact of Unknown sites). By 2010, 58% of the woodland area (1462 ha) was in Excellent or Good condition,

with the potential to support the target species. Habitat condition in the Rother Woods (Figure 8). 57% of sites improved in condition, covering 2475ha. There was a 39% increase in the woodland area in Excellent or Good condition. Two core sites (Beckley Woods, managed by Forestry Commission England, and Brede High Woods, managed by the Woodland Trust) received targeted management with the support of the project officer and attained Excellent condition by the end of the project. Several large woodland sites in the centre of the landscape moved from Intermediate to Good condition, and in the east of the landscape (the original focus of the initial project area), many smaller sites came into Good condition. At the same time, the project was able to engage with a large number of woodland owners where no management was taking place and initiate some management activity, bringing 27% (1199 ha) out of Poor condition into at least Intermediate condition. Habitat condition in the Denge Woods 56% of sites improved in condition, covering 2068ha. At the start of the project in 2007 a few large sites were in Good condition, including three Forestry Commission England sites, but these were isolated from each other by large numbers of smaller, privately owned sites, many of which were in Poor condition (26%), holding little or no open habitat for butterflies (see Figure 9). Particular effort was directed at the core complex holding the last remaining Duke of Burgundy colonies: Denge & Eggringe Woods managed by FCE and Denge & Pennypot Woods managed by the Woodland Trust. Targeted efforts here included work funded by Biffaward as well as economic forestry, volunteer work parties and direct management by FCE, and by 2010 the complex had achieved Excellent condition. At the same time a broader approach of advisory work and grant support helped increase management at many privately-owned sites, particularly in the Northeast and central parts of the project area. By 2010, only 8% of the area was in Poor or Very Poor condition, while 73% (2868 ha) was in at least Good condition for butterflies and moths.

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Figure 7. Changes in habitat condition for sites in the Tytherley Woods

2007

2010

Excellent

Bentley Wood

40

Figure 8. Changes in habitat condition for sites in the Rother Woods

2010

2007

Beckley Woods

Brede High Woods

Excellent

41

Figure 9. Changes in habitat condition for sites in the Denge Woods

Excellent 2007

2010

Denge & Eggringe /

Pennypot Woods

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4.4 Funding sources for woodland management The mechanisms underlying changes in woodland management were complex and differed across the three landscapes depending on factors such as woodland type and access to local woodland markets. For the 247 sites where we assessed habitat condition, we identified the primary funding mechanism for management during that time through discussion with the landowner and partner organisations from the following broad categories:

Agri-environment Scheme: Funding under Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) scheme;

eWGS: The English Woodland Grant Scheme administered by Forestry Commission England. Several types of grant were available including Woodland Improvement Grants (WIGs);

Grant (other): A grant to landowners to carry out work or directly funded management administered through a project partner, including Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) and Sustainable Development Fund;

Economic Management: The costs of woodland management were covered by the sale of woodland products such as timber, firewood or coppice products, making it economically sustainable;

Owner: Funding for management work coming directly from the landowner;

Unknown: No single primary funding source could be identified. A summary of the primary funding sources used in each landscape is given in Table 6. In many cases a combination of funding sources were used, but we attempted to identify a primary source supporting the majority of the work. Where this was not possible, or it was not clear how work had been financed, the funding source was classified as unknown. Importantly, we sought to identify which source had funded the open habitat features used in monitoring habitat condition (rides, temporary open space etc., section 4.3). Summary:

eWGS was the single largest source of funding for management overall, funding 41% of sites and 44% of the woodland area. It was the most frequently used source of funding in the Tytherley and Denge landscapes, and in the Rother landscape, although the most numerous funding source was ‘Unknown’, eWGS was responsible for a similar area of woodland.

Economic management was a major source of funding in the Denge and Rother landscapes. Both landscapes contained significant areas of Sweet Chestnut and Hornbeam coppice, which were harvested for firewood and timber, as well as being processed for woodchip in woodfuel systems. In the Tytherley Woods economic management was not identified as the primary funder for any site. This is not because no economic management took place here (project officers reported that it was a frequent feature of site management) but because we made particular efforts in this landscape to bring the majority of landowners into the eWGS scheme. Thus Tytherley sites often had some economic management but during the project eWGS was the primary funder here supporting the majority of open habitat creation.

It should be noted that the increases in woodland management recorded were at least partly due to improvements in the market for woodland products, particularly firewood, at a national level during the course of the project. This is the result of efforts by many organizations (particularly FCE) to promote woodfuel as an economically and environmentally sustainable energy source, as well as large-scale

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changes in timber and energy markets. We were able to take advantage of this increasing interest and invested considerable effort in promoting economic management across the region. If these levels of activity are maintained, woodfuel in particular provides an opportunity for economically sustainable woodland management into the future.

Agri-environment schemes were also used on a large number of non-woodland sites, particularly grassland, hay meadows and arable farmland, across all three landscapes. However this analysis only includes those sites containing woodland, for which agri-environment schemes were less frequently used (eWGS usually being a more suitable funding source for woodland work). This mechanism was more frequently used in the Denge Woods, where larger farm holdings included some areas of woodland.

Grant (other) was the primary funder at just a single site in the Denge Woods (representing a Landfill Communities Fund grant from Biffaward). Although we implemented at least three other grants in this category they were used to complement other primary funding sources (eWGS and economic management).

At 37% of sites the primary funder was unknown. This reflects that much of the work to classify sites was carried out at the end of the project in 2010, and it was often difficult to retrospectively obtain full information from land managers or identify a single, primary funder. However, it should be noted that project partners provided us with full information on agri-environment schemes and eWGS grants, so these sources were mapped particularly accurately. Sites classified as Unknown are therefore more likely to have been funded either through economic management or direct funding from the owner.

Funding sources and woodland condition Changes in woodland habitat condition for Lepidoptera (between 2007 and 2010) varied depending upon the primary source of funding (see Tables 6 and 7). It should be noted that this is a coarse analysis allocating a ‘primary funding source’ to each site, while in fact most woodlands which had management interventions featured a range of funding sources. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile examining which funding sources supported the majority of management:

eWGS was the most effective funding source for improving woodland condition (Table 6). 84% of sites funded by eWGS improved in condition, compared to 65% of Owner-funded sites, 60% of those receiving Agri-environment scheme funding, and 59% of those funded by Economic Management. Overall, eWGS funding was responsible for 54% of the sites that improved in condition, compared to only 8% and 7% for sites funded by Economic Management and Owners, respectively. Grant (other), which represented LCF grants, was a highly effective mechanism for producing suitable habitat for target Lepidoptera, but was only the primary funding source at one site.

‘No Change’ status indicates that a site maintained the habitat quality it had at the start of the project in 2007. Although theoretically this could mean that sites maintained Good or Excellent condition, this was only true for 17 of the 82 sites with a ‘No Change’ trend (21%). 79% of sites in the ‘No Change’ category were in Intermediate condition at best, and therefore lacked any habitat suitable for the target species.

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Looking in more detail at the habitat condition achieved by 2010, eWGS and Economic Management were both good mechanisms for producing habitat for the target Lepidoptera, with nearly two thirds of sites in at least Good condition (63% of eWGS sites and 64% of Economic Management sites in Good or Excellent condition by 2010, Table 7). By area, eWGS proved most effective, with 36% of woodland funded by this mechanism reaching Excellent condition compared to just 4% of Economic Management sites.

eWGS was the primary funding source for 68% of all sites in Excellent condition

(77% by area) and 54% of all sites in Good condition (47% by area). By contrast, Economic Management funded 11% of Excellent and 13% of Good sites (3% and 31% by area respectively). eWGS was thus the most effective mechanism for creating large areas of high quality habitat (that in Excellent condition) for the target

species.

Management funded directly by Owners (which includes private landowners, public bodies and NGOs) produced Good habitat (41% of sites) but little Excellent habitat (6% of sites). Similarly Agri-environment Schemes (largely Higher Level Stewardship) produced Good habitat on 23% of sites but Excellent habitat on only 8% (a single site).

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Table 6. Primary funding sources for woodland management We assessed habitat condition at 247 sites. Percentages show the proportion of woodland (in terms of number of sites, and by woodland area) supported by each primary funding source.

Primary Funding Source

Tytherley Rother Denge All sites Woodland condition trend

2007-2010

Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area Improved

No Change

Declined N % ha % N % ha % N % ha % N % ha %

Agri-environment Scheme

2 3 37 2 5 5 49 1 6 10 160 4 13 5 246 2 8 5 0

eWGS 51 66 1752 73 25 23 1581 36 26 41 1354 36 102 41 4687 44 86 15 1

Grant (other) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 306 8 1 0 306 3 1 0 0

Economic Management

0 0 0 0 11 10 206 5 11 17 1514 40 22 9 1720 16 13 9 0

Owner 1 1 7 0 12 11 989 22 4 6 117 3 17 7 1114 10 11 5 1

Unknown 23 30 609 25 54 50 1605 36 15 24 321 9 92 37 2536 24 41 48 3

Total 77 2407 107 4430 63 3772 247 10609 160 82 5

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Table 7. Primary funding source and resulting woodland condition in 2010 Data for all South East Woodlands landscapes combined, based on the 247 sites for which habitat condition was assessed. Percentages show, for each funding source, what proportion of woodland achieved each condition category (in terms of number of sites, and by woodland area). Only those sites classified as Excellent or Good hold habitat suitable for the seven target species that were the main focus of management activity in the project landscapes.

Primary Funding Source

Woodland condition 2010

Agri-environment Scheme

eWGS Grant – (other) Economic

Management Owner Unknown

Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area Sites Area

N % ha % N % ha % N % ha % N % ha % N % ha % N % ha %

Excellent 1 8 3 1 13 13 1672 36 1 100 306 100 2 9 63 4 1 6 107 10 1 1 27 1

Good 3 23 57 23 51 50 2178 46 0 0 0 0 12 55 1426 83 7 41 433 39 21 23 534 21

Intermediate

7 54 177 72 30 29 759 16 0 0 0 0 5 23 142 8 7 41 509 46 47 51 1419 56

Poor 1 8 4 2 8 8 78 2 0 0 0 0 3 14 89 5 2 12 65 6 18 20 511 20

Very Poor 1 8 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 45 2

Total 13 245 102 4687 1 306 22 1720 17 1114 92 2536

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4.5 Predicted Management Condition Trend (post 2010) Both woodland management (section 4.1) and habitat condition (section 4.3) were assessed in terms of changes that had already taken place by 2010. However in many cases the project initiated ongoing management work that at many sites was only just beginning in 2010. This included writing long-term management plans, setting up eWGS or HLS grants that run for several years, or funding initial infrastructure works that would allow sustainable economic management to continue in future. We therefore anticipated that, if these mechanisms for continuing woodland management are successful, management condition (and therefore the habitat for target Lepidoptera) within the three woodland landscapes should continue to improve in future years. To examine the anticipated legacy of the project we estimated what future management condition was expected to be in 2014, assuming that all management planned by the project officers and land managers for the years 2010 to 2014 was actually completed. Although it might be expected that some of this management might not actually take place, this process at least provides an estimate of the longer term project impacts. We carried out this exercise for the 247 sites for which habitat condition had previously been assessed. Each site was assigned to one of the following categories of Management Condition Trend in December 2010 based on predicted management planned and agreed between land managers and project officers (and often supported by grant agreements). Management Condition Trend: Improving - Active management taking place, sufficient to create new habitat for target

Lepidoptera. Also sites with funding for future work in place (grants or sustainable economic management) and a high level of manager participation, such that it could be expected to continue without project officer support;

Maintained / No Change – Sufficient management taking place to maintain current

Lepidoptera habitats without increasing them. This also includes ‘No Change’ sites that have had little or no management since 2007 but are not expected to decline further;

Declining - No further active management planned, or management practices that are not

sufficient to maintain target Lepidoptera. Existing habitats are expected to decline as open areas regrow.

Note that this was a different assessment from the ‘habitat condition’ used in section 4.3 as it was not possible to accurately predict the individual habitat elements that were used in that assessment. This ‘management condition trend’ instead looked at the extent of management overall on the site to estimate future condition.

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Figure 10. Predicted Management Condition Trend 2010-2014, for all landscapes combined. Proportion of woodland area in each condition category.

71%

21%

8%

Improving

Maintained /

No Change

Declining

Across all three project landscapes, 56% of sites (138 of 247) were predicted to improve in management condition by 2014, with 42% maintaining current levels of management. Only 2% (5 sites) were predicted to have declined. Sites expected to decline include those where no long-term commitments to management were possible, or where temporary habitat was present during the project but is expected to have become unsuitable for target species by 2014 (for example as clearfells regenerate or new plantings mature).

Based on woodland area, 71% of sites were predicted to have improved in condition (7545ha out of a total 10609ha, Figure 10). 21% were predicted to have maintained condition. Gains were higher in terms of woodland area than in terms of the number of woodland sites because in many cases we targeted effort at large sites to maximise project impacts. Securing ongoing grants or supporting sustainable economic management sytems provided mechanisms for land managers and partner organisations to ensure that management continues on these sites.

This illustrates that habitat gains from landscape-scale conservation are not instantaneous, and that even in a three-year project management changes and subsequent habitat gains can be expected to continue beyond the funded life of the project. This project aimed to put in place long-term management, secured by grants lasting several years and sustainable economic management, and 92% of the woodland area assessed is expected to have at least maintained condition three years after the end of project funding.

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4.6 Land Manager Participation Project officers offered management advice, and support in implementing that management, to as many sites as possible within each landscape, and the responses of land managers was unsurprisingly very varied. Many land managers responded very positively to our initial contact, and took an active part in the project seeking to improve habitat management for Lepidoptera alongside their own management objecties. For some land managers conflicting woodland objectives (for example commercial forestry or game management requirements) meant that they felt unable to become involved, and for others support was welcomed but time constraints or other limitations (such as distance from the woodland site) meant that they could only have limited involvement. In 2010 project officers categorised the level of manager participation for each site as shown in Table 8. The term ‘land manager’ is used here to refer to the person who was the point of contact for the project officer at each site: this could be a site owner, agent or management staff. The results of this analysis are shown in Figure 11. Table 8. Categories of land manager participation.

Manager Participation Explanation

High level of participation

Managers were fully engaged with the project, changing woodland management to improve Lepidoptera habitats and participating in project events whenever possible. Land managers often involved in monitoring Lepidoptera responses.

Active participation Managers actively engaged with the project and attempted to revise land management in accordance with advice. Took part in at least some project events.

Limited participation Managers took part to some extent, accepting advice on management, but were limited in ability to take action, usually due to time constraints or conflicting management objectives.

Low level of participation Managers received advice or a single site visit but were unable to, or chose not to, act on advice or participate further.

No involvement Managers took no part in the project, for a range of reasons, or project staff were unable to make contact.

Land manager participation overall was high (Figure 11), with managers of 68% of

sites and 81% of the woodland area having at least limited participation in the project.

21% of site managers had no involvement (this includes sites where staff were

unable to trace land managers or establish contact), but in terms of woodland area

managers from only 11% of the woodland did not get involved.

There were few differences in participation patterns between the three landscapes

(% of managers having at least limited participation ranged from 70-83%).

50

Figure 11. Land manager participation across all landscapes by number of sites and woodland area (ha), for the 284 sites monitored by the project.

The difference in participation values in terms of sites and woodland area arises

because the managers of larger sites were more likely to participate. This is in part

because project officers deliberately targeted large sites to try and maximise impact,

but also because managers of smaller sites found it more difficult to participate. At

small sites managers were often private individuals with fewer resources and less

time than the managers of large sites. In addition, at small sites it is often harder to

find space to incorporate management for conflicting objectives.

5%

36%

27%

11%

21% High participation

Active participation

Limited participation

Low participation

No involvement

Number of sites

Woodland area

10%

41%

30%

8%

11%High participation

Active participation

Limited participation

Low participation

No involvement

51

5. Results – Species Responses at the Landscape Scale The increases in woodland management activity and improvements in habitat condition for Lepidoptera demonstrated in section 4 were key objectives of the South East Woodlands Project. However, the fundamental test of whether conservation action has succeeded is whether or not the target species are able to respond by increasing population numbers and/or distribution. Species monitoring was a core part of the project, and records of butterflies and moths were collected by staff, volunteers and project partners from each of the landscape demonstration areas and from across the region. These included casual records gathered by members of the public in their gardens, schools and local countryside, monitoring data from project sites collected in standardised timed counts and transects, and the results of targeted surveys for particular species carried out by skilled amateurs and professional biologists. At least 20,000 records of 40 species of butterfly and more than 700 species of moth were recorded in the South East Woodlands project areas between 2007 and 2010. All records were submitted to county recorders and incorporated into county and national recording scheme databases, and provided to the owners or managers of woodland sites to provide feedback on survey results and inform future management. At many sites, woodland management work took one or more years to get underway, so there is a limit to the species responses that can be measured within a three-year project. Butterflies and moths do respond rapidly to environmental change, however (see e.g. Fox et al, 2006), so in this section we examine what evidence there is that the management and habitat changes implemented under this project are having the desired positive effect on the target group of threatened butterflies and moths. We present an assessment of scarce species recorded across all sites and individual case studies demonstrating the responses of target species at the landscape scale.

5.1 Lepidoptera Score 2007-2010 Butterfly Conservation and the Forestry Commission developed a simple system for assessing the importance of woodland sites for Lepidoptera as part of a joint conservation strategy (Forestry Commission England & Butterfly Conservation 2007). The Forestry Commission grading system uses a ‘Lepidoptera Score’ to identify priority sites for conservation action based on the presence of assemblages of scarce and threatened butterflies and moths and their dependence on managed woodland habitats. We used the same scoring system which is based species’ conservation status (particularly UK BAP Priority Species) and their dependence upon active management (Table 9), gaining points for the species recorded between 2007 and 2010. These species scores were added together to provide a Lepidoptera Score for a site, and the sites were ranked into Site Grades to highlight their relative importance for scare Lepidoptera (equivalent to the Forestry Commission Grades used in the above conservation strategy, Table 10). We were not able to carry out this assessment separately at the start and end of the project because there was no consistent species data for these sites when the project started, and because for many species (particularly moths) it often required multiple surveys to confirm species’ presence. As a result, the Lepidoptera Score is derived from records gathered during the whole project. It is important to note that the relationships between Lepidoptera Score and other factors explored in this section are correlations, and that to confirm causality for these links would require further work in which species were monitored in more detail before and after management intervention.

52

Table 9. Species grading used in calculating Lepidoptera Score. Derived from FCE/BC Conservation Strategy for Lepidoptera on Forestry Commission Land in England. Species from the original strategy that were not recorded in any of the landscapes are omitted from this table.

BAP Priority Species that require urgent targeted management

Species Score

Argent & Sable Rheumaptera hastata Moth 15

Drab Looper Minoa murinata Moth 15

Duke of Burgundy Hamearis lucina Butterfly 15

Lunar Yellow Underwing Noctua orbona Moth 15

Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria euphrosyne Butterfly 15

Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria selene Butterfly 15

BAP Priority Species where woodland is a secondary habitat or where regular active management is less critical

Species Score

Buttoned Snout Hypena rostralis Moth 5

Clay Fan-foot Paracolax tristalis Moth 5

Common Fan-foot Pechipogo strigilata Moth 5

Dingy Skipper Erynnis tages Butterfly 5

Grizzled Skipper Pyrgus malvae Butterfly 5

Marsh Fritillary Euphydryas aurinia Butterfly 5

Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth Hemaris tityus Moth 5

Olive Crescent Tristateles emortualis Moth 5

Waved Carpet Hydrelia sylvata Moth 5

BAP Priority Species associated with mature trees

Species Score

Dark Crimson Underwing Catocala sponsa Moth 3

Light Crimson Underwing Catocala promissa Moth 3

Scarce Merveille du Jour Moma alpium Moth 3

White Admiral Limenitis camilla Butterfly 3

White-letter Hairstreak Satyrium w-album Butterfly 3

White-line Snout Schrankia taenialis Moth 3

Other key species occurring in woodland

Species Score

Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-moth Hemaris fuciformis Moth 1

Dark Green Fritillary Argynnis aglaja Butterfly 1

Purple Emperor Apatura iris Butterfly 1

Silver-washed Fritillary Argynnis paphia Butterfly 1

Triangle Heterogenea asella Moth 1

White-banded Carpet Spargania luctuata Moth 1

53

Table 10. Site Grades based on cumulative Lepidoptera Scores. Classification derived from FCE/BC Conservation Strategy for Lepidoptera on Forestry Commission Land in England. Results based on species recorded between 2007 and 2010 on 284 monitored sites covering 10,891ha.

Site Grade Description Lepidoptera

Score No. of sites % of sites Area (ha)

% based on area

Average site area (ha)

A

Regarded as High Priority Sites containing at least one woodland UK BAP Priority Species. Species dependent on targeted and specific woodland management e.g. annual ride maintenance or coppicing cycle.

>15 27 10 3615 33 139

B

Containing species of lower conservation concern or UK BAP Priority species with more general habitat requirements, but still requiring some woodland management. Not wholly dependent on continual management or early successional habitats.

6 to 15 30 11 2396 22 77

C

Containing species of lower conservation concern or UK BAP Priority species with more general habitat requirements. Not wholly dependent on continual management or early successional habitats. Sites given lower priority because they support a less diverse group of species.

<6 227 80 4878 45 21

54

9% of sites within these landscapes (33% of the woodland area) were classed as Grade A woods (Table 10), making them among the best woodlands nationally for Lepidoptera. In the 2007 assessment of the Forestry Commission England estate 77 of 140 sites assessed were classed as Grade A sites (Forestry Commission England & Butterfly Conservation 2007).

The best quality sites were larger, with Grade A sites almost twice as large on average as Grade B sites and more than six times larger than Grade C sites. Grade A sites included five Forestry Commission England sites, two Woodland Trust sites, two Bentley Wood Trust sites and single sites managed by each of Wiltshire Wildife Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust, as well as privately owned woodland. These public or NGO-managed sites were larger than average (219ha comapred to the project average of 38ha), and included biodiversity as a management objective before the start of the project (although not all were in good condition for Lepidoptera at that point).

More than half of the woodland area of these landscapes contained UK BAP Priority Species requiring some management to maintain their habitats (Grade A & B sites combined). Continued woodland management across these landscapes will be needed in future for these species to persist.

The Tytherley Woods contained 12 Grade A sites, compared to five each for the Rother and Denge landscapes, highlighting the importance of this area for scarce woodland Lepidoptera.

Lepidoptera Score and Woodland Management We examined patterns in Lepidoptera Score and the Site Conservation Grade in relation to whether woodland management had taken place by 2010 (Figure 12). Sites were classed as Managed or Unmanaged (Section 2.6) based on whether management had taken place within the previous three years, i.e. during the course of the project. There was a very strong relationship between management status and Lepidoptera Score.

96% of Grade A sites (Lepidoptera Score >15) were Managed in 2010, compared to

3% which were Unmanaged. By woodland area, 37% of all Managed woodland and

only 5% of Unmanaged woodland had Grade A status.

87% of Grade B sites (Lepidoptera Score 6-15) were Managed in 2010 compared to

4% which were Unmanaged. By area, 22% of all Managed sites and 22% of all

Unmanaged sites were scored as Grade B.

69% of Grade C sites (Lepidoptera Score <6) were Managed in 2010 compared to

31% which were Unmanaged. By area, 41% of Managed sites and 73% of

Unmanaged sites were scored as Grade C.

The Grade A sites (i.e. those with the scarcest species or those most closely associated with continuous management) were those that had received management during the course of the project. As previously stated, we cannot be sure that this is a causal relationship, and to some extent project officers targeted management work at sites that already held high priority Lepidoptera. However, it is striking that Unmanaged woodlands were overwhelmingly of Grade C status, and that Grade A status was almost never achieved without management. The single site Grade A site that was Unmanaged received that grading because of the presence of several scarce moths (Clay Fan-foot, Olive Crescent and Waved Carpet) that are more tolerant of irregular management.

55

A

B

C

Site Grade and

Management Status

Figure 12. The relationship between Site Grade (derived from Lepidoptera Score) and management during the project.

Lepidoptera Score and Habitat Condition Habitat condition assessed in 2010 provided a more detailed measure of the open habitats available within each woodland site by the end of the project, and again showed a strong relationship with Lepidoptera Score (Figure 13).

98% of the woodland area classified as Grade A was in Excellent or Good habitat

condition. This is not surprising, as the categories for habitat condition were based on

the presence of open habitat features known to be important for the priority species

used in generating the Lepidoptera Score. However, this effectively supports our

interpretation (section 4.3) that only sites in Excellent or Good condition can support

the rarest, most demanding habitat specialist Lepidoptera that we targeted in this

project.

79% of the woodland classified as Grade B was in Excellent or Good habitat

condition.

Only 28% of the woodland classified as Grade C was in Excellent or Good habitat

condition. Woodlands without significant open space or regular management

(Intermediate condition) can, at best, only support a suite of commoner woodland

Lepidoptera or those priority species associated with more mature habitats.

56

Figure 13. Site Grade and habitat condition in 2010. Figures are presented for the total area

of woodland in each habitat condition, across all three project landscapes.

Grade A sites

Excellent

Grade B sites

Excellent

Grade C sites

Excellent

57

Grade A sites

15%

67%

11%7%

High level of participation

Active participation

Limited participation

Low level of participation

Grade B sites

10%

47%

40%

3%High level of participation

Active participation

Limited participation

Low level of participation

Lepidoptera Score and Manager Participation There was also a relationship between the Lepidoptera Score for a site and the level of participation the site manager had with the project (figure 14). Manager participation is defined in section 4.6. Figure 14. Site Grade and Manager Participation. The percentage of sites in each category of participation are shown and zero values are omitted.

Grade A sites had the highest level of participation, with managers actively

participating at more than 82% of sites (participation = high or active). 7% of sites (2

sites) supported Grade A Lepidoptera with only low levels of project participation.

Participation was also high for Grade B woods, with active involvement on more than

half of sites.

Only 34% of managers were actively involved on Grade C sites, with 26% not

participating with the project at all.

Grade C sites

4%

30%

28%

12%

26%High level of participation

Active participation

Limited participation

Low level of participation

Unable to participate

58

5.2 Case Study 1: Pearl-bordered Fritillary in the Tytherley Woods. In the Tytherley Woods landscape Pearl-bordered Fritillary was one of the primary target species for conservation action. In 2006 before the project started the species occupied five sites in the landscape, including one of the UK’s strongest populations at Bentley Wood, which had been the focus of most previous work on the species in this area. We aimed to improve the population at the landscape-scale by restoring a network of suitable habitat across multiple sites. To do this we attempted to:

1) Increase habitat management on existing sites to improve populations in each colony;

2) Restore suitable habitat on unoccupied sites within 2km of existing colonies to encourage natural recolonisation;

3) Monitor all extant and potential sites to track colonisations and extinctions. 1. Increasing habitat on existing sites. In South-East England, Pearl-bordered Fritillaries breed in a range of habitats including coppiced woodland, bracken-rich woodland clearings and rides, and open forestry plantations that have been recently cleared or planted. In all these habitats, egg-laying sites are found on bare ground or rock where the larval foodplants, dog violets (chiefly Viola riviniana) grow, or among dry leaf litter of oak or dead bracken (Clarke et al. 2011). In the Tytherley Woods, breeding sites include in-cycle Hazel coppice, wide ride edges and temporary or permanent clearings with bracken, and woodland rides where trees and scrub have been cleared in scallops to create open ground among oak standards (effectively linear coppicing at the ride edge). All five occupied sites were already receiving some management at the start of the project, so we worked with land managers to ensure that management appropriate for Pearl-bordered Fritillary was incorporated into existing plans. We aimed to secure populations at these sites by increasing the area of breeding habitat, and we provided specific management advice to do this at each site in 2007. Management was implemented to some extent on all sites in the winter of 2007/08 and each year we provided landowners with feedback on the success of management.

Management techniques included coppicing and deer fencing, ride widening, scrub management, clear-felling non-native conifers, selective felling and bracken management.

Management was supported by economic management (timber, firewood and coppice products), eWGS, direct contributions by owners and volunteer tasks. In addition, Butterfly Conservation secured a grant of £29,757 from SITA Trust in partnership with the Bentley Wood Trust, for 5.5ha of targeted management at Bentley Wood (Figure 15).

Habitat condition improved at four of the five sites between 2007 and 2010, and Excellent condition was maintained at the fifth (Bentley Wood). Four out of five sites are in receipt of eWGS grants to support ongoing management; at the fifth the landowner has declined both eWGS and HLS grants.

Pearl-bordered Fritillary populations increased at four of the five sites between 2007 and 2011, and the population was stable or slightly declining at the fifth, a rough grassland site where grazing would be beneficial but does not fit the owner’s objectives.

59

E D

C B

Figure 15. Management funded by SITA Trust for Pearl-bordered Fritillary at Bentley Wood, 2007-2009. A. In 2007-08, SITA Trust funded the creation of 16 habitat patches to expand and link existing Pearl-

bordered Fritillary colonies, consisting of 1.5ha of ride widening & scalloping and 4ha of coppice or

clearfell. All of these patches produced suitable breeding habitat within two years and 12 (75%) were

colonised by the butterfly by 2011. All colonized patches were within 300m of existing Pearl-bordered

Fritillary colonies. Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Dingy Skipper, Argent & Sable and Drab Looper

also colonised many of these areas in the same time period. B. A ride-edge scallop undergoing

conifer clearance in 2008. C. The same site in 2011, with the open ride edge now providing breeding

habitat for Pearl-bordered. D. A 2008 clearfell during removal of non-native conifers. E. In 2011

following natural regeneration and oak planting in clusters, the former clearfell patch holds breeding

Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Drab Looper and Tree Pipit.

A

SITA habitat patch colonisations by Pearl-bordered Fritillary: Colonised 2009-2011 No evidence of colonisation

60

2. Restoring suitable habitat on unoccupied sites. Although we worked with landowners throughout the Tytherley landscape during the course of the project (section 4.1), we made particular efforts to target management within close proximity of sites already occupied by Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Mark-recapture studies of this species have found dispersal abilities within woodlands to be relatively modest, with most individuals moving less than 500m (Oates 2003). However in the same study the butterfly readily colonised new habitat patches within the same wood within 600m, and a single marked female was recorded moving 4.5km between different woods. In the Tytherley Woods we prioritized advisory work and management action within a 2km zone around each occupied site, considering this the distance within which natural recolonisation from existing sites was most likely.

Of the 45 sites within 2km of an occupied site, only 19 (42%) had any management in 2007, and none were in Good or Excellent habitat condition (required to support Pearl-bordered Fritillary). By 2010, 39 (87%) had some form of management and 15 (33%) were in at least Good condition.

The total area of woodland under management, within the 2km target area, increased from 319ha to 794ha during the project (an increase of 149%).

3. Monitoring colonisations and extinctions in the Tytherley Woods landscape. Pearl-bordered Fritillary colonised 7 sites in the Tytherley landscape during the project, all of them within 2km of an existing colony (Table 11 & Figure 16). Although there are former records of the species at only some of these sites, all are considered to be recolonisations of previously occupied sites, as the species would once have been common in this landscape when traditional woodland management such as coppicing was more widespread. Note that because we monitored woodlands at the site level (distinct woodland blocks separated from each other by non-woodland habitat) we did not systematically record dispersal within individual woods. Our observations of Pearl-bordered Fritillary within Bentley Wood confirm that new habitat patches less than 500m from existing colonies within the same wood were readily colonized within 1-3 years (as in the SITA-funded work illustrated in figure 15). Table 11. Pearl-bordered Fritillary colonisations between woodland sites during the Tytherley Woods project.

Site Site area (ha)

Minimum distance to nearest colony (km)

Date of colonisation

Habitat condition 2007

Habitat condition 2010

1 30 1.2 2009 Intermediate Good

2 36 1.9 2010 Intermediate Good

3 31 1.3 2011 Intermediate Good

4 22 1.4 2011 Unknown Good

5 19 1.3 2011 Unknown Good

6 2 1.2 2011 Unknown Good

7 18 2 2011 Unknown Good

Average 23 1.5

61

The number of occupied sites in this landscape increased from 5 in 2007 to 12 in 2011, and the total woodland area of occupied sites increased by 17% from 921ha to 1078ha.

The minimum distance from colonised sites to the nearest known breeding habitat was 1.5km on average, although colonizing individuals could have come considerably further. Two sites were west and five east of the nearest colony, from which colonisation was presumed (prevailing wind directions in the area tend to be from the west or southwest). The intervening land around colonised sites in all cases was a mixture of woodland and arable farmland with hedgerows. In most cases the intervening woodland was not considered suitable for Pearl-bordered Fritillary, but in one case apparently suitable open woodland habitat remained unoccupied between the colonised site and the presumed source.

Pearl-bordered Fritillary habitat was in managed Hazel coppice at five of the colonized sites, at another was in a widened ride edge, and in the other was in a mixture of Hazel and birch coppice and open ride edges.

All of the colonised sites had already been subject to some management in 2007, but none were in good enough condition to support the species at the start of the project. By 2010 all were still being managed and were in Good habitat condition (section 4.3). Although we did carry out detailed habitat assessments for all of these sites, nearly half of the 15 sites within 2km range that had achieved Good condition

(considered the minimum for Pearl-bordered Fritillary breeding) were colonised.

As the number of occupied sites in the network increases, more new sites also come within colonization distance: the number of sites within 2km of an occupied site increased from 50 in 2007 to 59 in 2011.

There were no Pearl-bordered Fritillary extinctions at the site level in this landscape between 2007 and 2011. Loss of the species from individual patches of habitat such as coppice coupes or temporary clearfells are common in almost all populations as the short-lived breeding habitat becomes overgrown, and this was also observed in the Tytherley landscape, although detailed monitoring was only carried out at the site level. In contrast, in the wider South East region, the species went extinct from at least three of the other ten sites (excluding reintroduction sites) over the same time period (Butterfly Conservation, unpublished data).

62

Figure 16. Conservation of Pearl-bordered Fritillary in the Tytherley Woods: targeting and colonisations 2007-2011.

Project boundary

Pearl-bordered Fritillary

sites 2007

2km target areas around

occupied sites

Pearl-bordered Fritillary colonisations 2008-2011

Woodland sites

Crown copyright. All rights reserved Natural England 100046223 [2012]

63

5.3 Case Study 2: The Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods. In 2007, the Duke of Burgundy was in a perilous state in Kent, with a peak count (the highest single day total at each site) of just 11 butterflies on two sites, both in the Denge Woods, making it one of the primary target species for management here. The species occupies both actively coppiced woodland, where the larvae feed on Primrose Primula vulgaris, and scrubby chalk grassland where Cowslip Primula veris is used (Thomas & Lewington 2010). The Denge Woods landscape features both habitats, although when the project started in 2007 some potential sites had not been surveyed for several years due to access restrictions. The two known sites were areas of heavily-scrubbed chalk grassland within woodlands: Bonsai Bank, part of Denge & Eggringe Woods managed by the Forestry Commission and The Warren, part of Denge & Pennypot Woods managed by the Woodland Trust. Here we aimed to:

1) Support ongoing management at the two known sites; 2) Combine broad increases in woodland management across the whole Denge Woods

landscape with targeted habitat improvements on intervening grassland sites using Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship scheme.

3) Increase volunteer involvement in surveys of occupied and potential sites; 1. Supporting ongoing management at the two known sites.

At Bonsai Bank the Forestry Commission have undertake some management each winter, usually involving the removal of small numbers of the stunted, poorly growing conifers that give the site its name. In addition, grassland areas were regularly mown to keep regenerating scrub at bay. Since the start of this project in 2007, management has been altered slightly to accelerate the removal of non-native conifers to create the small, sheltered glades required by Duke of Burgundy, with annual volunteer work parties helping to clear the trees. Mowing of the grassland has also switched to longer rotation up to 5 years, with the regenerating scrub providing breeding sites for Duke of Burgundy in years 2-4. The Forestry Commission has led on several habitat improvements in recent years including clearance of dense conifers from the southern and western parts of the site and the creation of a substantial 1km long wide ride on land in private ownership to link the two main colonies. The Woodland Trust undertakes annual management at its Denge & Pennypot Woods site, including ride management and mowing of a large grassy clearing (The Warren). To increase the area of breeding habitat for Duke of Burgundy within the complex, in 2009 project staff secured a grant of £45,933 from Biffaward to support further management on both sites. Between 2009 and 2011 this grant funded 2.8 ha of coppice, 2.6 ha of new permanent glades, 540m of ride widening, and 1 ha of ride management using a flail mower collector to remove cut material from the sites (Figure 17). Of the seven new habitat patches created under this grant in 2010, totaling 8 ha, four had already produced suitable habitat for Duke of Burgundy by 2011 and two were being used for breeding by the butterfly. Annual monitoring carried out by volunteers has shown that these habitat interventions have successfully boosted the population on these core sites, with numbers in the complex building steadily from a peak count of 10 in 2007 to 47 in 2011 (Figure 18). The partnership between the Forestry Commission and The Woodland Trust, a private landowner, Butterfly Conservation and Biffaward has created new breeding habitat (coppice clearings and ride edges) and improved connections between the existing colonies, with Duke of Burgundy showing a strong positive response. Searches for Duke of Burgundy larvae at these sites have shown that cleared areas are rarely used for breeding in the first year, despite abundant primrose germination. The butterfly is breeding primarily in two to four-year old regrowth of coppice and dogwood scrub, providing the sheltered, lush primrose plants the species prefers for egg-laying and larval development.

64

Figure 17. Examples of habitat management for the Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods. A. Bonsai Bank, a Forestry Commission site, a failed plantation of Western Red Cedar

(Thuja plicata) on chalk, in early spring 2010. Primrose is abundant across the slope, but larval surveys have shown that breeding is confined to the regenerating scrub edge one to four years after cutting. It is managed by rotational cutting by volunteers and FC staff, with older patches of scrub removed each year and paths maintained for access. B. Ride widening on Woodland Trust land at The Warren, cleared in winter 2009/10 with Biffaward funding, pictured in April 2010. C. Bonsai Bank, June 2011, northern end where Duke of Burgundy counts are highest, showing the high proportion of scrub and the vegetation height of breeding areas following annual spring growth. D-F. Woodland Trust ride widening & coppicing funded by Biffaward – occupied by Duke of Burgundy. G. Wye Downs NNR, cattle-grazed grassland – Duke of Burgundy breeds at the heavily scrubbed right-hand end. H. Crundale Estate grassland and woodland edge, managed by grazing and bramble cutting.

A B

C D

E F

G H

65

Figure 18. Annual maximum peak counts within the Denge Woods, 1995-2011. Maximum peak counts are the combined peak counts from all three occupied habitat patches within the Denge Woods complex within a given year: Denge & Eggringe Woods (Forestry Commission), Denge & Pennypot Woods (Woodland Trust) and the connecting Wide Ride (private ownership). Peak numbers for individual patches typically occur on different days but are combined to estimate the maximum across the whole area. As in all butterfly monitoring, annual population fluctuations reflect both weather conditions and habitat quality, but numbers have built steadily since the project began in 2007 and the 2011 peak is the highest from these core sites for more than a decade.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

2. Target management improvements on grassland sites across the landscape. As in each of the demonstration areas, project activities contributed to an increase in the general level of woodland management taking place across the landscape as a whole –a 17% increase in managed woodland area between 2007 and 2010, with 56% of sites improving in habitat condition (see section 4). Although at the start of the project in 2007 the only known sites for Duke of Burgundy were within woodland, the Denge Woods landscape also featured extensive areas of chalk grassland, including former sites for the butterfly, offering opportunities for positive management for Duke of Burgundy in this habitat as well. The project officer worked closely with Natural England staff, Kentish Stour Countryside Project and other partner organisations to examine former grassland colonies and potential sites, providing advice on how to create the scrubby, primula-rich conditions needed by Duke of Burgundy as part of a network of diverse grasslands meeting the needs of a range of species.

Natural England’s High Level Stewardship scheme (HLS), and the Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS) that preceeded it, provided the main mechanism for influencing habitat conditions on grassland sites. Two sites were National Nature Reserves (NNRs) managed directly by Natural England.

Site-specific advice was provided for all sites entering HLS in the project area, and for those sites already in CSS schemes where a longer chalk grassland sward was present. Where possible, Duke of Burgundy was identified as a target feature in HLS agreements, with grazing and scrub management aiming to produce sward heights between 10 and 20cm in May and scrub levels of 10-20%.

Year ar

Duke

of

Bu

rgun

dy P

ea

k C

ou

nt

Start of project

66

Woodland management was also included in several stewardship schemes (under option HC07 Maintenance of woodland), particularly focusing on diversifying the woodland edge where it ran alongside grassland. Typically this included annual coppicing of small (0.5-1ha) areas alongside occupied or potentially suitable grassland sites to encourage additional primrose growth. This provided an alternative mechanism to Forestry Commission Woodland Improvement Grants where the woodland area was a small part of a larger farmland holding.

Workshops on habitat management for Duke of Burgundy were held for land managers in stewardship or those considering entering schemes, enabling them to see suitable habitat and discuss potential management options.

Access for volunteers was encouraged to help monitor the effectiveness of schemes and provide feedback on grazing and scrub management on an annual basis.

3. Increasing volunteer involvement in surveys of occupied and potential sites to monitor species responses. A key focus of the project was to support existing volunteers and recruit new volunteers to carry out thorough surveys of former colonies and potential sites for Duke of Burgundy. A series of events including talks and guided walks attracted a core group of up to 20 regular volunteers under the banner of ‘Duke Guardians’, who carried out surveys for adult butterflies, larvae (Duke of Burgundy larvae produce distinctive feeding damage on the foodplants) and habitat conditions, as well as taking part in winter management work parties. The Denge Woods Project Officer, Fran Thompson, coordinated surveys and arranged access permission to private sites as well as providing feedback and management advice to each landowner.

Supported by the project officer and members of the local Kent branch of Butterfly Conservation, volunteer involvement increased greatly and contributed more than 370 days of effort to the project. More than 15,000 records of butterflies and moths were received from the project area, hugely increasing our knowledge of many sites and allowing better targeting of management and conservation effort.

The ability to carry out annual surveys made it possible to give landowners regular feedback on the wildlife on their property, strengthening relationships with the project and establishing a regular exchange of ideas and information to inform future management.

The Duke of Burgundy population recorded across the project area (the entire Kent population) increased markedly during the project (Table 12), with the maximum peak count increasing more than tenfold by 2011. The butterfly was recorded from 13 different sites between 2008 and 2011, having been found on only two sites in 2007 (Figure 19).

The great increase in recording effort during the project makes interpretation of these results more complicated, as at some private sites with limited access the butterfly may previously have gone unnoticed. However, we consider that only four of these sites represent previously established colonies being recorded for the first time (rediscoveries), while seven represent likely colonisations (or recolonisations of former sites).

Not at all of the patches occupied by Duke of Burgundy during this recording period represent breeding colonies – the species can come and go from nearby areas, especially where the quality of breeding habitat is marginal.

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Table 12. Duke of Burgundy in Kent recorded during the Denge Woods Project. Maximum peak counts are the combined peak counts from all sites in a given year, although counts may have taken place on different dates at each site. Two sites occupied in 2010 were not surveyed in suitable weather during 2011, while a third is thought to have become unsuitable due to overgrazing in late 2010.

Year No. of sites Max peak count

2007 2 11

2008 4 32

2009 8 61

2010 13 173

2011 10 115

The seven recorded colonisations include both sites with improved habitat conditions as a result of management during the project (scrub management, woodland edge management or grazing) and sites which were probably already suitable but have been recolonised from increasing populations on the core Duke of Burgundy sites.

The entire occupied Duke of Burgundy site network is about 8km from north to south, although the majority of colonisations are assumed to have taken place over very much shorter distances (see Figure 19): the minimum distance between a colonised site and the nearest colony ranged from 0.2- 3km (median distance 0.7km).

A range of other UK BAP Priority Species were found on sites targeted for Duke of Burgundy management, including Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper, White Admiral, Drab Looper and Black-veined Moth

Of the nine grassland sites on which Duke of Burgundy has been found since 2007, seven are in stewardship through HLS or CSS, while the other two are National Nature Reserves under direct management by Natural England. At all of these sites advice has been given on how to provide suitable habitat for the butterfly, with Duke of Burgundy included in the management objectives for all HLS sites.

At the start of the South East Woodland project the Duke of Burgundy was on the verge of extinction in Kent, with dwindling numbers on two known sites reflecting the bleak national picture (a 46% decline on monitored sites between 1999 and 2009, 30% distribution decline over the same period). In just four years the species has been restored to a network of more than ten suitable sites within the Denge Woods landscape, increasing from four occupied 1km squares to nine, with a tenfold population increase. These results offer further evidence that carefully targeted conservation work at a landscape scale can turn around the fortunes of threatened butterflies.

The ‘Duke Guardians’ group continues to work with conservation partners in the Denge Woods landscape area, carrying out transect monitoring, targeted surveys and management work parties and maintaining Butterfly Conservation’s involvement in the area, in an entirely voluntary capacity, long after funding for the South East Woodlands project ceased. Regular habitat management is needed across the landscape to maintain the current strong population of Duke of Burgundy, providing a network of suitable habitat in both woodland and grassland sites.

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Figure 19. Duke of Burgundy colonies in the Denge Woods landscape 2007-2011. The core colonies and colonisations are shown as an example of the landscape occupied by the butterfly; a colony to the south is omitted to allow mapping at an appropriate scale (a colony considered to have been present in 2007 but not discovered until 2009). Colonisations have been assumed to take place from the nearest occupied patch, but could have come from up to 4km away within this network. Additional habitat patches in both woodland and grassland were managed in the network during this period but are not shown here.

Two colonies known in 2007

Colonies discovered during project (2008-09) but considered to have been already occupied

Colonisations 2007-2011

Sites occupied in 2010 but not surveyed in 2011

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6. Conclusions and Recommendations The South East Woodlands Project, Butterfly Conservation’s largest conservation project so far, ran for four years and included the activities of four staff and over 1000 volunteers, and this report provides a summary of the project’s key outcomes. The project achieved all of its key aims within the four years for which funding was secured, and met or exceeded all of the specific targets agreed with its funders. In this section we examine the impact of the project, consider the strengths and limitations of its design and make recommendations for future action. 6.1 Project Design Landscape-scale conservation initiatives are increasingly being used to protect and enhance wildlife, underpinned by an appreciation that many of the threats facing biodiversity operate at large scales and that attempts to conserve species within individual nature reserves have failed to stop ongoing wildlife declines (England Biodiversity Group, 2011). Butterfly Conservation defines landscape-scale conservation as ‘the coordinated conservation and management of habitats for a range of species across a large natural area, often made up of a network of sites’ (Bourn & Bulman, 2005). This approach is informed by an appreciation of metapopulation theory, which examines how individuals move and persist between habitat patches within a landscape (Hanski, 1998). This has provided a framework for the conservation of butterflies in which the area, isolation and habitat quality of sites within a landscape all affect the probability of butterfly populations persisting, going extinct or colonising new habitat patches (Hanski, 1999; Thomas et al., 2001). The publication of the Sir John Lawton’s report to Defra ‘Making Space for Nature: A Review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network’ (Lawton et al., 2010) highlights the need for an ‘ecological network’ approach, and this report provides an example of the practicalities of implementing conservation projects on this scale. The South East Woodlands project delivered three separate landscape-scale conservation initiatives across the region between 2007 and 2011. The three landscape areas served as a test of mechanisms to promote and increase woodland management across an extensive wooded landscape, while at the same time delivering the carefully targeted site management necessary to reverse the declines of some of our most threatened butterflies and moths.

Delivering benefits across extensive landscape areas is possible given effective funding mechanisms and careful targeting of effort.

Careful targeting of habitat management for threatened species and broad habitat improvements across an ecological network need not be mutually exclusive.

We selected three target landscape areas where we knew management intervention was necessary to maintain dwindling populations of threatened butterflies and moths on a few key sites, but where larger-scale habitat changes could also deliver benefits for a broad suite of other species. Careful selection of project areas allowed us to target conservation effort where it was most needed, where key species persisted at low levels but with a network of potential habitat that could be restored. Project boundaries were chosen following major landscape barriers such as roads and river valleys that might restrict the movement of target species, rather than following landscape character. The project boundary acted as a useful tool to focus conservation effort and monitoring programmes, but project officers were able to respond to opportunities as they arose and provide advice and training beyond the boundary when appropriate. Each landscape area was strikingly different in its geography and ecology (including factors such as the number of woodland fragments, their average size, the number of landowners,

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dominant tree species and the lepidoptera species present). A flexible approach to project targets allowed variation in activities and approach (for example the Tytherley Woods had fewer landowners in a smaller land area than the other landscapes, allowing multiple visits giving detailed advice to a few owners of large woodland estates). When the uptake of eWGS grants proved very high, we were able to expand the project area to include additional landowners and further increase project impacts.

Habitat management can be effective over a range of scales within the landscape.

The project was successful in implementing increased management at both the small scale, within sites (for example through management work supported by the Landfill Communities Fund), between sites (for example in targeted work for the Pearl-bordered Fritillary in the Tytherley Woods, see section 5.2) and across whole landscapes (see management for the Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods, section 5.3). The three demonstration landscapes were the focus of most project activities and the full-time project officers were able to concentrate their efforts within defined areas and spend time building up knowledge of multiple sites and developing working relationships with land managers and partner organisations. The project manager also contributed to separate landscape-scale conservation initiatives elsewhere in the region (not covered in detail in this report), including the West Weald Landscape Partnership in Surrey and West Sussex and coordinated management across several sites in the South Downs. Although not without significant benefits, there was little scope for regular contact with landowners and few opportunities to develop ongoing collaborative work in these areas. This underlines that effective involvement in landscape-scale conservation needs adequate resources and a commitment of time and effort to realise the full potential of such collaborations.

Project officer roles are a highly effective way of uniting existing land management mechanisms to deliver a set of focused objectives at a landscape-scale, but are limited by short-term funding. The South East Woodlands project officers coordinated a wide range of activity, helping land managers to access public grants, coordinating management across multiple sites, supporting volunteers and connecting them with land managers to encourage accurate monitoring of management impacts. Project coordination has been identified as a common requirement of effective landscape-scale conservation partnerships (England Biodiversity Group, 2011). Many of the mechanisms used to support management in this project were already available to project partners and land owners, but highly skilled project officers provided the ecological expertise that ensured these mechanisms delivered suitable habitat for the target species. A key factor in this success was ability to build up relationships with landowners and project partners over time through repeated interactions and joint working, as well as the opportunity to get to know a landscape in depth. This is especially true for large estates where there are often multiple land uses and stakeholders with conflicting priorities. Landowner involvement, practical habitat management and volunteer monitoring all peaked in the third year of the project, indicating that there are significant benefits in building momentum with activity over successive seasons and shorter projects might struggle to replicate these impacts. Funders should consider whether investing in longer-term projects could provide improved outcomes and better value for money.

Working in partnership with other organisations committed to conservation action is essential to deliver habitat improvements at the landscape scale.

In all three of the demonstration landscapes Butterfly Conservation worked with conservation partners with shared objectives and a commitment to implementing action on the ground, achieving far more than would have been possible alone. Forestry Commission England was involved in the project from the design stage and was a consistent partner in all three

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landscapes, providing advice and support as well the targeted eWGS grants that funded much of the management work. In each area we depended upon the local expertise of project partners (the Kent Downs AONB, High Weald AONB and Hampshire County Council) who hosted Butterfly Conservation staff and assisted us in project delivery with contacts, detailed ecological knowledge and the history and significance of local sites. Without this local and strategic support it would not have been possible to deliver these widely separate landscape projects simultaneously, or to achieve nearly so much in each area. Identifying partner organisations with shared objectives and complementary strategies is crucial in ensuring that partnerships increase effectiveness rather than slowing down activity in a morass of consultation and repetition. Coordinating land management advice between organisations also avoids duplicating effort and provides landowners with clear messages, reducing the chances of contradictory advice undermining management activity. 6.2 Project engagement

There is a significant audience of land managers, woodland management professionals, wildlife enthusiasts and the general public who are keen to get involved in improving woodland biodiversity when given information and support.

The project’s structured programme of training and advice allowed individuals to increase their knowledge, confidence and skills, progressing to take leading roles in local conservation action.

Volunteer involvement greatly increases what can be achieved with limited resources, if appropriate training and support are provided.

Public engagement was a core part of the project, promoting cultural understanding of the links between wildlife and woodland management with a tiered structure of events through four levels of engagement (see section 3). This allowed members of the public who had not previously participated in conservation to develop their involvement through several stages over the course of the project. So an individual who attend a guided walk or promotional talk in 2007 might later take part in butterfly surveys and management work parties, receiving training in survey techniques and practical conservation skills, before taking on regular species monitoring tasks and later leading events or providing feedback and basic management advice to landowners. There was a very strong positive response from all audiences, with such a high demand for events and training that we revised project plans and delivered more than three times the number of events originally scheduled. We were able to achieve this extraordinary level of activity because some volunteers recruited through the early stages of the project went on to lead large numbers of events themselves. A number of our volunteers were already volunteering in some way with other conservation organisations (e.g. Wildlife Trusts or National Trust), a pattern that is also true with membership of Butterfly Conservation as a whole. We used this opportunity to spread information on conserving butterflies and moths back to these organisations (rather than attempting to push membership of Butterfly Conservation), and many events became joint activities between partner organisations as a result. In engaging with the general public in very rural locations, a range of promotional techniques were attempted but local community involvement was the most successful: promoting site activities and information to people already regularly visiting a site or living very close by (within 10 miles). High profile events were successful at drawing in more people from further afield but far fewer of these people became involved on repeated occasions.

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Land owners, land managers and agents were very receptive to advice and keen to provide suitable habitat for wildlife. Three factors were key to ensuring that advice was implemented: explaining how habitat features for wildlife could be incorporated alongside other objectives such as forestry, game or farming; including advice on how to meet the costs of suggested management; providing simple prescriptions illustrated with examples of the target habitat. We gave advice on at least 188 separate sites across the region covering more than 9,000ha of woodland. 41% of site managers took an active part in the project, attending at least one event as well as receiving site-specific advice, and 79% of all site managers accepted our offer of management advice (section 4.6). The costs of suitable management were a significant concern for many managers, but where sustainable economic management or grants were available to offset this it was almost always possible to agree positive habitat improvements. Most habitat management interventions made for Lepidoptera also contributed to other site objectives such as game management, deer control, forestry or recreational access, and identifying interests in these wider objectives was one of the key factors in engaging land owners. Land managers found it easiest to implement recommendations when prescriptions were kept simple and/or when they had been shown the target habitat (e.g. patches of violets amid collapsing bracken stands or recent coppice) and asked to create more of it. Land management workshops provided an efficient way to communicate with multiple woodland owners, managers and land management professionals at the same time, demonstrating examples of best practice habitat management, sharing experience and advice and discussing how to make existing conservation mechanisms function more effectively. Individual site advice visits were often necessary as a follow-up to apply management principles to specific site conditions. On one or two occasions, misunderstandings about the service being offered resulted in woodland agents feeling that project officers were cutting across their contracted role to provide advice to an owner. It is important that site advice is given via existing agents or site managers, so that project advice is seen as adding value to the service carried out by the agent. Conservation projects need to work closely with land management professionals to ensure effective communication across the industry and incorporate conservation advice into standard land management practices. 6.3 Implementing woodland management

Woodland management can be increased on a dramatic scale through a combination of advice and financial support, demonstrating that there is the potential to reverse decades of declining woodland management activity. There were significant increases in woodland management across all three demonstration landscapes during the project: the total number of sites receiving some management increased by 76% (90 sites) and the total area of woodland being managed increased by 31% (2471 ha) (section 4.1). This increasing level of management also resulted in improvements in habitat condition for our target Lepidoptera: the area of woodland in Good or Excellent condition increased by 31% according to our criteria (section 4.3). While it is not possible to ascribe all of these changes solely to the activities of this project, it is clear that much of this work would not have happened without the support of the project officers or partners who recommended management, wrote management plans, filled in grant applications and helped identify and manage contractors or volunteers to implement the work. We benefited from improving markets for wood products, particularly woodfuel during the project, which in many cases provided an economic basis for management. We further encouraged sustainable economic management by helping land managers to identify economic opportunities in their woods, connecting woodland owners with markets and

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woodland workers, and running workshops to demonstrate how economic forestry can underpin sustainable management with conservation objectives.

Habitat condition provides a direct measure of the impacts of management change, given that the funding periods of most landscape projects are too short to observe responses in the target butterfly species.

Assessments of habitat condition (a broad measure of habitat quality based on the requirements of the target species) provide a direct measure of the outcome of management activity. Given the three-year funding period of the project, typical of many landscape-scale schemes, it is not realistic to expect to observe population level responses among the butterfly and moth species that were the target of management interventions. While we did monitor butterfly populations (see section 5), we used habitat condition as a way of assessing project impacts. 65% of monitored sites improved in condition during the project, and the total area of woodlands in at least Good condition for Lepidoptera doubled. Habitat quality has consistently been identified as a critical factor in determining the occupancy of habitat patches by habitat specialist butterflies (Thomas et al., 2011) and is often more significant than isolation or connectivity (Hodgson et al., 2011). We have demonstrated that our approach to promoting and supporting woodland management can improve habitat condition (a rough measure of habitat quality) for Lepidoptera across extensive woodland landscapes, a crucial first step in reversing the decline of our woodland butterflies and moths.

Landscape-scale working provides an opportunity to deliver large areas of the target habitat, in this case early-succession open woodland, without compromising other habitats. The project improved woodland structural diversity overall by increasing open space while retaining large areas of mature woodland with lower levels of management intervention. By the end of the project, 73% of sites had received some form of management in the previous three years, while 27% had received no management at all. The lack of management on nearly 30% of sites ensures that plentiful habitat remains intact for the species that do not thrive under active management. Our aim was to produce landscapes with a better balance between open and mature woodland habitats, meeting the requirements of a range of species. Working across multiple sites is also essential for tackling the impact of deer on woodland structure and biodiversity. The project worked with The Deer Initiative to provide a series of workshops on deer management and supported the establishment of deer management groups, which requires the cooperation of multiple landowners. Such groups have the potential through coordinated control measures to reduce deer numbers to sustainable levels that limit the ecological and commercial damage they inflict. 6.4 Funding mechanisms for management

Economic forestry, agri-environment schemes, grant giving bodies and private funding can all make a contribution to increasing woodland management, but eWGS grants from Forestry Commission England were the most effective way of producing high quality habitat for the target species.

Economic forestry alone does not deliver the highest quality habitats, at least for woodland Lepidoptera.

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eWGS grants were the largest funding mechanism in the project, supporting management across 43% of monitored area. Crucially they were also the most effective, supporting 68% of all sites that achieved Excellent condition for Lepidoptera. The scheme was able to

support management of derelict coppice, ride widening and the creation and management of permanent open space within woodland, all of which were rarely provided by purely economic forestry. The latter was effective for funding in-cycle coppice and firewood rotations, including thinning, but had little scope for managing short rotation ride-edge scrub or permanent glades, which are highly significant for the threatened Lepidoptera targeted by this project. Thus economic forestry was a significant driver of management activity, and brought many into ‘Good’ habitat condition, but very rarely produced the high quality ‘Excellent’ habitat needed to support the target species. We conclude that while it makes sense to rely on sustainable economic forestry where possible to increase woodland management, the evidence from this study is that targeted grants which have biodiversity as part of their aims are far more effective in producing high quality habitat of the sort needed for threatened species such as the Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Further effort is needed to integrate economic and conservation objectives effectively, providing specific targeting and additional financial incentives to manage lower value features such as young scrub and permanent grassland. The BIOWIG80 grants available within the project areas contributed 80% of standard management costs, an enhancement of the 50% rates available across England under standard eWGS grants. Meeting a greater proportion of the costs of management (often greater than the estimated ‘standard costs’) made a significant difference to land owner uptake, and we recommend that these enhanced rates are made more widely available, especially where linked to specific biodiversity improvements.

We need to develop mechanisms that link woodland markets to the delivery of biodiversity targets. Markets for UK woodland products are steadily increasing, with deliveries of both UK grown softwood and hardwood increasing since 2007 (Forestry Commission, 2012). At the same time, the woodfuel sector is growing rapidly (Forestry Commission England, 2010) as the Forestry Commission works to deliver ambitious Government targets to increase the amount of biomass made available through the woodfuel supply chain. The Woodfuel Strategy for England (Forestry Commission, 2007) sets out a target to increase wood harvesting in England by 60% by 2020, based on bringing to market as biomass fuel an additional 2 million tonnes per year, with a stated focus on under-managed woodlands. FCE’s Woodfuel Implementation Plan 2011-2014 (Forestry Commission England, 2011) outlines actions designed to bring more privately owned woodlands into active management and build capacity in the woodfuel market. This includes contributing to ‘the development of biomass sustainability criteria that protect woodlands and forests whilst keeping regulation and administrative burden on forest-based businesses and woodland owners to a minimum.’ This project demonstrates that substantial increases in management are possible. However, we provide evidence that the market alone (economic management) will not produce the high quality habitats needed for much of our declining woodland wildlife. Light-touch regulation of a thriving woodfuel market is likely to generate a lot of uniform, regular thinnings of deciduous woodland rather than the complex structural diversity and varied management rotations recommended by this report for the benefit of Lepidoptera, a requirement shared by declining woodland plants and birds (Plantlife, 2011, Fuller et al. 2005). To realise the full potential of this increase in active woodland management, mechanisms are needed that provide a better link between woodfuel markets and biodiversity targets, including research that identifies where management is most needed and where it would be most likely to impact negatively on woodland biodiversity. Woodland conservation need not

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conflict with targets for increasing wood harvesting (Wildlife & Countryside Link, 2009), but adequate regulation and certification will be fundamental to ensuring that increased management contributes genuine habitat improvements. Furthermore, the improving market for woodland products should be seen as an opportunity to develop innovative landscape-scale conservation initiatives that link the woodland economy more closely to biodiversity targets.

Woodland grant schemes and agri-environment schemes can be highly effective mechanisms for improving habitat condition if well targeted and adequately resourced. Forestry Commission England’s eWGS provided one of the major funding mechanisms for management for the project and were the most effective at creating high quality habitat conditions for Lepidoptera. The partnership between Forestry Commission and Butterfly Conservation was essential in delivering these grants effectively over a wide area, with Butterfly Conservation project officers providing site targeting, ecological expertise and advice on appropriate management options to enable FC staff to put grants in place. Project officers acted as a link between FC staff and land owners, helping to set up site visits, write management plans, choose grant options and fill in application forms. This assistance encouraged many sites to enter grant schemes for the first time. A well-funded grant scheme with simple application forms and grants that meet the true cost of carrying out work can help deliver significant increases in sustainable management across UK woodlands. Agri-environment schemes were not applied systematically across non-woodland sites in the three landscapes, in part because the recently formed Natural England was not able to engage with the project from the start. Where local partnerships worked well, such as in the Denge Woods, had a significant impact on populations of butterflies on grassland sites that complemented nearby woodland improvements (see section 5.3).

Landscape-scale conservation projects can only be delivered with adequate funding that includes the costs of project delivery and staffing as well as direct habitat management. The South East Woodlands project took two years to develop and nearly four years to deliver. It was only possible by combining funds from a number of different sources including two major grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Tubney Charitable Trust. These grants focused on the delivery of land management advice, education and training across the region, and neither funder was willing to support the costs of carrying out woodland management. Grants from the Landfill Communities Fund were used to support direct habitat management that proved highly effective in improving habitat quality on a few key sites. This will only ever be suitable for the most urgent habitat management on a limited number of sites, and so is not a mechanism for driving broader habitat changes. In addition, limitations on the funding available for staffing and core costs from several LCF funders means that additional funding is required to support the project officers who deliver this work. 6.5 Monitoring project outcomes

Good quality spatial data is essential to design effective landscape conservation schemes.

Assessing the impacts of management intervention requires carefully designed monitoring systems.

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Landscape data showing woodland cover provided by the Forestry Commission and Natural England was essential in designing project areas and targeting strategies for the South East Woodlands project. Some butterfly data was available from the Butterflies for the New Millennium project, typically for key sites in conservation ownership with high profile (scarce) species, but there was little or no baseline data available for most private woodland sites, which had never been surveyed. Several practical limitations affected the quality of the data we were able to gather during the project. As in most landscape projects, there was no lead-in time to gather preliminary data, making it very difficult to fully assess species responses for the wide range of Lepidoptera found on project sites. We used timed counts to assess the key target species in each area. We also used a basic assessment of Habitat Condition for Lepidoptera to estimate habitat suitability for each site before and after management intervention. This was necessarily rather simplistic, but allowed us to monitor the impacts of management on habitat condition for 284 sites covering more than 10,000ha. In addition, we provided advice at every site where we had access, meaning that we cannot compare results for sites where the project did not intervene - there is no control data. A more rigorous scientific approach would be to design a randomised control trial in which only half of monitored sites received project advice and management assistance. However, as with many conservation initiatives, the urgency of species declines means that we need to intervene on as many sites as possible. Collaborating with research scientists (e.g. Merckx et al. 2011) offers the potential to collect additional data from landscape-scale projects. Funders should also recognise that monitoring habitat and species responses is not an optional extra but an essential part of demonstrating the biological outcomes of project activities. There is also a need to strike the right balance between management action and monitoring. We monitored management change at the level of entire woodland sites (usually along ownership boundaries). As project officers only had limited time in which to effect and then monitor management, it was not possible to monitor management change within each individual woodland block. Spending more time on detailed monitoring would have meant spending less time implementing management and allowed us to reach fewer landowners. Mapping areas of actual woodland management or at the level of woodland blocks would be recommended for smaller project areas. We achieved the most detailed coverage in the Tytherley Woods landscape, which thus provides the most accurate assessment of project management impacts. 6.6 Species responses

Populations of threatened species can respond rapidly to appropriate management, where it provides a network of suitable habitat.

The project produced some very notable successes in improving the status of highly threatened butterflies in only four years. Although the funding period of most landscape-scale projects is too short (typically three years) to expect to see species responses, in this case we were able to demonstrate significant conservation successes across two of our landscape areas: Pearl-bordered Fritillary recolonised at least seven habitat patches in the Tytherley Woods and Duke of Burgundy colonised or returned to at least seven habitat patches in the Denge Woods landscape, as well as being rediscovered on four more sites. Both of these species increased populations on their known core sites and expanded into the surrounding landscape to occupy habitat patches made suitable by management coordinated by this project. It is worth noting that both of these recoveries took place against a backdrop of continuing declines for both species in the region: At least three colonies of Pearl-bordered Fritillary went extinct in the south east between 2007 and 2011, and it was lost from both Surrey and the Isle of Wight; at least six colonies of Duke of Burgundy went extinct in the region in the

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same period. For both species conservation efforts have been ongoing and included advice and monitoring at several of these sites, but none were the focus of landscape-scale management efforts. The contrasting fortunes of these species within and beyond these landscapes demonstrate the urgent need for renewed conservation action and should inspire us to apply the lessons and techniques of this project over a much wider area.

Populations can recover even on small, apparently isolated sites given appropriate management.

Extinctions are not inevitable even on small or isolated sites. The recovery of the Duke of Burgundy in Kent, considered on the verge of extinction in the county before the project began, demonstrates the resilience and the potential for recovery of many threatened butterflies. Many habitat specialist butterflies, especially those associated with early successional habitats in woodland, are adapted to take rapid advantage of new habitat patches that may only be short-lived. They have high reproductive rates and the successful dispersal of just one or two founder females can give rise to new colonies. As a result, even small, seemingly doomed populations can be restored by securing the remaining sites and building a network of suitable habitat to support a metapopulations.

Targeting appropriate habitat management is vital to restore populations of declining butterflies.

The colonisations recorded in this project took place over relatively small distances following very carefully targeted habitat management: Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in the Tytherley Woods colonised patches within 2km; for Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods colonisation distances are harder to infer but are likely to have been no more than 3km. In both landscapes, efforts for these target species focused on creating high quality habitat within 2-5km of existing colonies (considered within the colonisation range of both species), while the more distant reaches of these extensive landscapes received general management to open up woodland habitats for more widespread species. It is never possible to predict exactly which patches will be colonised in a landscape, and not all potential habitat patches will be successfully colonised before they becomes unsuitable again, so sustained management is needed across multiple sites. The species’ status within particular sites is less important than the balance between colonisations and extinctions which ensures that a metapopulation persists in the landscape (Hanksi, 1999). Conservation strategies need to take account of the population dynamics, habitat requirements and dispersal capabilities of their target species. Individual landowners can rarely be expected to understand these complexities for multiple species, but skilled project officers can provide appropriate advice and coordinate management across the landscape, as demonstrated in this project.

Conservation approaches that emphasise habitat quality and management targeting work at both a landscape scale and within individual sites. The project recorded colonisations of newly restored habitat both within and between sites. Targeting habitat management within core sites, funded by SITA Trust and Biffaward under the Landfill Communities Fund, was also highly successful: of 16 patches of suitable habitat for Pearl-bordered Fritillary created within one site in the Tytherley Woods, 12 were colonised within three years (section 5.2); two out of four patches of suitable habitat created for Duke of Burgundy in the Denge Woods were occupied (section 5.3). Similarly, long term studies in the Blean Woods of Kent show that most colonisations of new habitat by the Heath Fritillary take place over distances less than 300m – for this species connecting new areas of coppice along rides or in close proximity to existing colonies is important. Indeed, improved targeting of management in the early 2000s increased patch

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colonization rates from 18% to 75% (Brereton, 2006). The high within-site colonization rates of new patches by Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy in the current study may have been aided by targeting management along open rides and in close proximity to existing colonies. At a landscape scale, an emphasis on improving habitat quality within natural dispersal range is usually more effective for conserving habitat specialist butterflies than making detailed plans to restore hedgerows and field margins as ‘wildlife corridors’. Such habitat modifications can make the ‘matrix’ of the landscape between suitable breeding patches less hostile to a dispersing butterfly, but butterflies are quite capable of, for example, crossing an arable field. The evidence is that connectivity at the landscape scale is about the distance between patches of potential breeding habitat rather than the intervening matrix (Lawson et al. 2012; Thomas et al. 2011).

If habitat quality is high, species recovery may require only relatively modest overall changes in the habitat composition across a landscape. In this study, population increases and new colonisations for both Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy butterflies were detected when less than 10% of the total woodland area was subject to management. Thus even for habitat specialists with a strong association with open, sunny conditions within woodland, healthy populations can survive in relatively small areas given high habitat quality. This illustrates that the needs of both open and shade-loving species need not be in conflict, and that careful management planning across woodland landscapes can support a range of habitat types and species.

Species provide an essential measure of whether landscape-scale conservation action is really working. The responses of species of animals and plants provide the unequivocal proof that management interventions have succeeded. In this project, populations of threatened, rapidly declining butterflies increased and repopulated the landscape, demonstrating the effectiveness of carefully planned habitat management. Management for target habitats or broad landscape character does not reveal ecological function in the same manner. Sir John Lawton’s review of ecological networks highlights that: ‘Species keep conservation efforts honest, and there is no surrogate metric that can reliably assess conservation success or failure without knowing what is happening to populations of plants and animals in the landscape.’ (Lawton et al., 2010).

A range of other species benefit from habitat management targeted at one or two habitat specialists. This project used key habitat specialists to guide management and demonstrate success, but also provided benefits for a wide range of other species. The project contributed improved habitat for at least 13 UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species including Anania funebris, Argent & Sable, Black-veined Moth, Coleophora wockeella, Dingy Skipper, Drab Looper, Grizzled Skipper, Marsh Fritillary, Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, White Admiral and Wood White. The project supported a study of the impacts of woodland management on macro-moths within the Tytherley Woods demonstration area (Merckx et al., 2012), which underlined the importance of structural diversity for moth diversity and abundance. The study recommended that moth abundance and species richness could be maximised by promoting varied management across woodland landscapes, combining extensive, sheltered high forest areas (important for a range of scarce and Red Data Book species) buffered by more open woodland with coppice and wide rides. It also suggested that the benefits of active woodland management such as coppicing were greatest in larger woodland blocks.

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Although it wasn’t possible to monitor the responses of other taxa during the project, a range of other species were recorded using habitats managed for butterflies and moths, including Adder, Nightingale, Slow Worm, Tree Pipit and Turtle Dove. The project supported a conference examining common themes in woodland conservation, The Future of Wildlife in British Woodlands, which identified several key areas of joint interest and highlighted the need for a sustainable cycle of management leading to structural diversity and habitat diversity to benefit all taxa. It would be desirable to develop future landscape-scale projects that address the needs of multiple taxa more directly and monitor their responses.

Broad habitat improvements across a landscape are likely to result in wider population changes for a range of species, but may be harder to assess and only become apparent over a longer period. Attempting to monitor butterflies over 284 woodland sites over three landscapes for three years would be an impossible task, even given the high levels of volunteer participation in this project. An indication of the butterfly diversity at each site, however, was achieved though irregular volunteer survey visits, which were used to generate a Lepidoptera Score (Section 5.1). The Lepidoptera Score, based on a classification used across Forestry Commission sites, provides an indication of the presence of scarce and threatened species present: Grade A sites have more of the most threatened species, Grade C sites the fewest species or only common and widespread species (Table 10). Although caution is needed in interpreting these correlations as evidence of causation, there were clear relationships between site characteristics and Lepidoptera Score: the best butterfly sites were larger (Grade A sites almost twice as large on average as Grade B sites and more than six times larger than Grade C sites); the best sites were managed (96% of Grade A sites, 87% of Grade B sites) and in at least Good condition (98% of the woodland area classified as Grade A and only 28% of the woodland classified as Grade C was in Excellent or Good habitat condition); and the best sites had high levels of participation in the

project. Of course the likelihood is that many of these site characteristics are inter-related: sites where managers participated in the project were likely to have had recent management and to be in good condition. While it isn’t possible to be sure that these butterfly results are the result of project activity, they provide strong indications that a wider suite of butterfly species have been able to respond to increased management and improving habitat condition. They also provide evidence that the habitat condition assessments we carried out are a good indicator of habitat quality for a range of butterflies. The fact that the best quality sites had high levels of project participation fits with our experience of conservation action for Lepidoptera over many years in a range of habitats. Successful habitat management for habitat specialist butterflies and moths requires land managers to take interest/responsibility. Often at the very best sites land managers are involved in monitoring to some extent: observing wildlife on their own land provides instant and compelling feedback on the success of management techniques. We should encourage land managers to take an active role in conservation projects but also ensure that, where involvement is low (for whatever reason) managers are still given very clear information and regular feedback on results. Occasional intervention by outside agents without land owner ‘buy in’ is rarely a recipe for success.

Although species responses provide the best indicator of successful management intervention, they cannot be guaranteed within the short funding period of most landscape projects.

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A three or four-year project is usually too short to demonstrate species responses, and timed counts or site occupancy at the patch level as used here are no substitute for long-term monitoring. Weather conditions can also have a major impact on butterfly populations from year to year, with poor weather in the flight period potentially masking population increases resulting from improved habitat quality or preventing suitable habitat from being colonised. In this project, much of the habitat management across the three demonstration landscapes did not take place until the final winter (2010/11), with no chance for butterflies to colonise before the final habitat assessments were carried out in spring 2011. We have highlighted the two landscapes in which target species managed to respond very quickly. Extensive habitat management targeting the Grizzled Skipper and Dingy Skipper also took place across multiple sites in the Rother Woods, and although there have been promising counts from some sites it is too early to assess how these species will respond to landscape-scale changes. In addition, the Pearl-bordered Fritillary was reintroduced to one site in the Rother Woods following its extinction here in the last decade, but it will take several years of monitoring to be able to assess the success of this project. The results presented in this report represent an early snap-shot of the way butterflies and moths are responding to the very extensive habitat changes achieved by the project, and a fuller picture of its impact on populations will require ongoing monitoring.

6.7 Project legacy

The landscape-scale habitat improvements demonstrated in this project are not a one-off fix. Restoring woodland habitats for butterflies inevitably involves regular management to reset succession processes and create new open space in what are essentially dynamic habitats (Clarke et al., 2011), creating an ongoing commitment to management activity. Ensuring that such management is sustainable involves making sure that it is both possible (practically and ecologically) and affordable, and these concerns were central to the delivery of the project.

Grants, management planning and sustainable economic forestry can all help to maintain ongoing management after the project funding ends.

Some of the habitat gains documented here risk being short-lived if management does not continue. However, grants which have been used to improve woodland infrastructure (access improvements such as tracks, ditches and loading bays, deer fencing or coppice restoration) have potentially improved the cost effectiveness of managing woods in the long term. For many sites we helped write management plans that set out future management work in a wood and consider both the economics of management and how it will affect habitat structure. Both woodland grant schemes and agri-environment schemes can also provide a support mechanism for ongoing management, as agreements last several years and provide an opportunity to maintain project gains.

If management agreed during the project is followed through to completion, woodland condition at many sites should continue to improve. The project was designed so that management plans, grant agreements and sustainable economic forestry would all continue to deliver woodland management after the funding period ended in 2011. We estimate that if all the management agreed by 2011 is implemented, 92% of the woodland area assessed is expected to have at least maintained condition, and 71% is expected to have improved in condition by 2014 (section 4.5). An analysis of ongoing work three years after the end of the Coppice for Butterflies Challenge project (and three years after enhanced grant rates stopped) found that 84% were still planning to continue active coppicing (Wigglesworth et al. 2003). It highlighted concerns,

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however, that the the quality of management (size of coppice coupes and timing of cutting) might not be maintained. Building on the findings of the Coppice for Butterflies Challenge, eWGS WIG grants now last longer, and the continued involvement of Forestry Commission Woodland Officers provides some continuity of advice and support to landowners. The assumption that proposed management is implemented in future remains to be tested. In our experience the continued presence of project officers or similar professional staff makes an enormous contribution to ongoing work, by providing advice, helping to target management, dealing with unforeseen problems and giving practical assistance in securing and managing contractors to deliver work.

A network of volunteers, inspired and trained by the project, continue conservation action in each landscape and are a key part of the legacy of the South East Woodlands project. Continued voluntary effort in the project areas will be critical to ensure project gains are maintained. The project worked hard to build networks of skilled volunteers to continue conservation action in each area, supported by Butterfly Conservation local branches and partner organisations. Volunteer groups have evolved in different directions in each landscape: in the Denge Woods volunteers come together under the banner of ‘Duke Guardians’ to coordinate work on the Duke of Burgundy; in the Rother Woods a local ‘Rother Guardians’ group continue to monitor and carry out conservation work in some key woodlands; and in the Tytherley Woods a subgroup of volunteers did not come together, but many active volunteers deliver conservation activities on project sites in association with the Hampshire & Isle of Wight branch of Butterfly Conservation or other groups including Hampshire Wildlife Trust and the National Trust. Through a combination of conservation work parties, support and advice for land managers, and continued monitoring, volunteers are helping to ensure long-lasting benefits from the project. Although not all sites are still monitored, volunteers do continue to visit many key sites on an annual basis to monitor species responses, with findings reported to landowners and used to help plan future management, with assistance from Butterfly Conservation staff and partner organizations.

Final thoughts Overall, we have demonstrated that land managers and local communities are keen and able to take an active involvement in conservation in their area, and that significant improvements in woodland management are possible in a relatively short time. Carefully targeted woodland management can lead to improved habitat condition and rapid positive responses from threatened and declining wildlife. The project provides an effective model for influencing land management at a landscape-scale, delivered by a combination of skilled staff, trained volunteers and committed partnership working by public bodies, non-governmental organisations and private landowners. The extent of management activity, improving habitat condition and the responses of threatened species all serve as indicators of success. An established network of enthusiastic volunteers, equipped with the skills and equipment needed to continue conservation action, offers an opportunity to extend the project’s legacy for many years. During a national conference organised by the project in 2010, The Future of Wildlife in British Woodlands, the keynote speaker George Peterken commented that the British conservation movement had known for thirty years what needed to be done to diversify and improve woodland wildlife, but that it had simply not been done. The challenge now is to take

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examples of successful intervention, such as the South East Woodlands Project, and apply their lessons more widely to halt the ongoing decline of our woodland wildlife.

Working at a landscape scale, across many sites, allowed us to examine how the needs of the target species (threatened, habitat specialists associated with open space in actively managed woods) can be incorporated alongside the requirements of other wildlife. The project highlights that woodland Lepidoptera are best served by a conservation approach incorporating active management to create structurally diverse woodland landscapes. The long-term test of this project’s success will be whether management cycles are maintained, the woodlands in our demonstration landscapes are sustainably managed, and populations of threatened woodland butterflies and moths continue to improve.

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7. Acknowledgements A project of this scale and duration necessarily involves hundreds of individuals and numerous partner organisations who have contributed funding, direct participation, time, advice and support in many ways, and thanks are due to everyone who has taken part since project development began in 2005. In particular, Nigel Bourn and David Bridges at Butterfly Conservation were instrumental in designing and delivering the project, and many Butterfly Conservation staff provided advice and expertise throughout. The South East Woodlands Project was directly supported by financial contributions from a large number of funders and project partners, including The Heritage Lottery Fund, The Tubney Charitable Trust, Forestry Commission England, Natural England, the Kent Downs AONB, the High Weald AONB, Hampshire County Council, SITA Trust, Biffaward, Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, Ian Askew Charitable Trust, Manifold Trust, Ownwood Limited and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. Additional funding was provided by contributions from Butterfly Conservation branches including Hampshire & Isle of Wight Branch, Hertfordshire & Middlesex Branch, Kent Branch, Surrey & Southwest London Branch, Sussex Branch, Upper Thames Branch and Wiltshire Branch, as well by individual donors to Butterfly Conservation’s Save Our Butterflies appeal and South East Woodlands appeal. Many partner organisations provided invaluable help in delivering the project by hosting staff, running workshops and sharing expertise, including: Forestry Commission England, including Forest Enterprise, Natural England, High Weald AONB, Kent Downs AONB, Hampshire County Council, Kentish Stour Countryside Project, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, National Trust, Southern Water, Woodland Trust, Bentley Wood Trust, Hertfordshire & Middlesex Wildlife Trust, Kent Wildlife Trust, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Plantlife, DSTL, The Deer Initiative, Small Woodland Owners’ Group, Small Woods Association and Wessex Environmental Associates. The South East Woodlands Project would not have been possible without the support and involvement of so many volunteers, landowners, agents, land management professionals and partner organisations who combined to implement practical habitat management and deliver conservation action across the region. Ordnance Survey maps were produced under licence from Natural England: Crown Copyright and database rights [2012]; Ordnance Survey 100022021.

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