North Devon's Biosphere Reserve

North Devon's Biosphere Reserve is in northern Devon in South West England. Although mainly in the districts of North Devon and Torridge, the reserve also extends into West and Mid Devon. It covers a large area of sea up to in depth off the North Devon coast and includes Lundy island from the shore. The core area is centred on Braunton Burrows, a large sand dune system, which consists of of sand dunes, slacks (troughs between the dunes), grassland, scrub habitat, and a part of the Taw-Torridge Estuary. The reserve's boundary follows the edges of several river catchment areas, mainly of the River Taw and the River Torridge, but also those of smaller rivers running into the sea between Hartland and Lynton. The North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty lies at the heart of the reserve, while parts of the national parks of Dartmoor and Exmoor fringe the boundaries. There are no cities within the reserve. Barnstaple, Bideford, Ilfracombe, Braunton, Northam and Great Torrington contain many of the 155,000 people living in the wider buffer area of the Biosphere. The surrounding towns and villages are also included in reserve projects and policy decisions. == History ==

There is evidence of humans in North Devon from Mesolithic times onward. Worked pieces of flint or stone, known as flint scatters, that date to this era have been found around Baggy Point in an area where flint does not occur naturally. In the clays beneath the sand of Westward Ho! beach there is a Mesolithic midden, a prehistoric dump for domestic waste, composed of mussels, cockles, peppery furrow shells (Scrobicularia plana), and carpet shells (Venerupis spp.). On Exmoor the remains of small flint tools called microliths, used by hunter-gatherers to hunt and prepare animals, have been found and date to the late Mesolithic. In the Neolithic period, people started to manage animals and grow crops on farms, and started to cut down the woodlands of Exmoor, rather than act purely as hunters and gatherers. These Neolithic people created stone monuments and by the Bronze Age were creating barrows (burial mounds) and roundhouses. Evidence shows that extraction and smelting of mineral ores to make metal tools, weapons, containers and ornaments had started by the Iron Age. Many villages and hamlets may be found within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), most dating back to Saxon times and many recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Grade I-listed remains of medieval architecture can be found in Combe Martin, Berrynarbor and in the hamlet of Stoke, near Hartland. The dune system of Braunton Burrows was re-designated as the core area of the biosphere reserve under the revised goals. Since its recognition, the AONB had no management service until the early 1990s when a Heritage Coast Service was formed to manage two defined Heritage Coasts which have similar boundaries to the AONB, the Hartland Heritage Coast and the North Devon Heritage Coast. This service went through a number of name and remit changes, first renamed as the Northern Devon Coast and Countryside Service, and then as the North Devon AONB and Biosphere Service. The establishment of the North Devon AONB Partnership in 2004 led to the service being split to become two separate entities, the North Devon AONB Service and the North Devon Biosphere Service. == Management ==

UNESCO sets out three functions of a biosphere reserve: conservation, learning and research, and sustainable development. Biosphere reserves aim to create and maintain sustainable communities where people can live and work in an area of high environmental quality; these areas can then provide a blueprint for other areas to learn from. The reserve must be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. To achieve this, the reserve oversees management of natural resources, initiatives to develop the local economy, and an effort to reduce inequalities between people. Biosphere Reserve Partnership is part of an improvement scheme organised by the partnership. The management of the biosphere reserve is undertaken, on behalf of local authorities and stakeholders, by North Devon's Biosphere Reserve Partnership. The group is composed of a number of interested parties including the Ministry of Defence, Devon County Council, the Environment Agency, Natural England, some educational institutions, national park authorities, representatives from northern Devon commerce and industry, local farmers and fishermen, Devon Wildlife Trust, and the National Trust. The decrease in pollution is also hoped to increase beach quality in places such as Instow, which failed water quality tests in 2012, one of only sixteen beaches in the South West to fail. A Nature Improvement Area proposed to protect and enhance the catchment of the River Torridge—home of Tarka the Otter in Henry Williamson's book of the same name—was chosen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as one of twelve nationally important landscapes which will receive funding to restore and recreate ecosystems in the area. Other large projects work to use the natural environment to offset the negative impacts of human activities within the Biosphere. In 2006, the total labour force on Devon farms was 23,240 people, with around 7,953 employed full-time. The reserve is therefore managed carefully with the cooperation of farmers and landowners; as the boundaries of the reserve are the catchment areas of the River Taw and River Torridge, extra precaution must be taken in protecting water supplies from nonpoint source pollution. Rainwater can accumulate residues of fertilisers, especially nitrates and phosphates. Once leached into the rivers they can affect the river ecology through eutrophication, causing damage to plants and animals. This is one of the most pervasive water quality problems in Europe. Pathogens excreted by animals can also directly affect humans when transported by rainwater to rivers and the sea where people swim. The Biosphere Reserve Partnership provides support to farms that encourage sustainable practices, benefit the environment, and have a good role within the community. == Ecology ==

North Devon's Biosphere Reserve contains many nationally important habitats including culm grassland (Molinia caerulea and Juncus spp.), broadleaved woodlands, estuaries, and coastal heathland. A 10-year Biodiversity Action Plan for the reserve identifies actions that can be carried out by the partnership to help nature conservation, learning, and research. It also contains 63 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), 671 County Wildlife Sites, a Special Area of Conservation, and six Local Nature Reserves. It includes the complete successional range of dune plant communities, with over 400 vascular plant species. On the strandline there is rock sea lavender (Limonium binervosum). The fore and mid dunes are generally sandy yellow dunes, colonised and stabilised by marram grass. Other notable species include sea stock (Matthiola sinuate), sea stork's-bill (Erodium maritimum), sea clover (Trifolium aquamosum), Portland spurge (Euphorbia portlandica), sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias), and white horehound (Marrubium vulgare). Further inland, the stable grey dunes are stabilised by other species such as dune fescue (Vulpia membranacea). The dune slacks, the valleys between the dunes, may flood after heavy rain and are wet and marshy during the winter. They support round-headed club-rush (Scirpoides holoschoenus), sharp rush, round-leaved wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia ssp. maritima), early gentian (Gentianella anglica), and many orchid species. Behind the dunes, grassland, or dune pasture, supports a variety of grasses, sedges and herbs including rough poppy (Papaver hybridum) and toothed medick (Medicago lupulina). Scrub invasion occurs with native species such as willows, privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and common blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), and introduced species such as sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides). The characteristic and notable species outside the core area include sea purslane (Halimione portulacoides), Salicornia spp., pea crabs that live inside mussels, lugworm, Hydrobia snails, and annual seablite (Suaeda maritima) in estuarine and saltmarsh habitats; common reed (Phragmites australis), creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera), common rush (Juncus effusus), and fat duckweed (Lemna gibba) in the low and grazing marshland of the floodplains; and hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), crested dog's-tail (Cynosurus cristatus), and creeping bentgrass in mixed farmland. The reserve also contains nationally rare mammals such as the common dormouse and the European otter, the marsh fritillary butterfly, and coral reef off Lundy Island found nowhere else. == Activities ==

follows the North Devon Coast past these cliffs at Clovelly. North Devon's Biosphere Reserve in its wider definition attracts a large number of visitors each year. Four million people a year visit, up to 60,000 a day in August. This research also recorded that 27.6% of visitors to the region came because of the Path, and they spent £136 million in a year. Local people took 23 million walks on the Path and spent a further £116 million, and other visitors contributed the remainder. A further study in 2005 estimated this figure to have risen to around £300 million. Other popular attractions include surfing, the Tarka Trail, Northam Burrows Country Park, Rosemoor Garden, and Watermouth Castle. == References ==