United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan

The United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) is the governmental response to the Convention on Biological Diversity opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The UK was the first country to publish a national Biodiversity Action Plan in 1994.[1]

Following the creation of the UK BAP, devolution, in 1998, led the four countries of the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) to develop their own country strategies for biodiversity and the environment. There are also Local BAPs (LBAPs).[2] In 2012 the UK BAP was succeeded by the 'UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework', but the work identifying priority species and habitats remains relevant.[3]

As of 2009 1,150 species and 65 habitats were identified as needing conservation and greater protection and were covered by UK BAPs.[4] The updated list included the hedgehog, house sparrow, grass snake and the garden tiger moth, while otters, bottlenose dolphins and red squirrels remained in need of habitat protection.[5]

Priority habitats

  • Rivers
  • Oligotrophic and dystrophic Lakes
  • Ponds
  • Mesotrophic lakes
  • Eutrophic standing waters
  • Aquifer fed naturally fluctuating water bodies
  • Arable field margins
  • Hedgerows
  • Traditional orchards
  • Wood-pasture and parkland
  • Upland oakwood
  • Lowland beech and yew woodland
  • Upland mixed ashwoods
  • Wet woodland
  • Lowland mixed deciduous woodland
  • Upland birchwoods
  • Native pine woodlands
  • Lowland dry acid grassland
  • Lowland calcareous grassland
  • Upland calcareous grassland
  • Lowland meadows
  • Upland hay meadows
  • Coastal and floodplain grazing marsh
  • Lowland heathland
  • Upland heathland
  • Upland flushes, fens and swamps
  • Purple moor grass and rush pastures
  • Lowland fens
  • Reedbeds
  • Lowland raised bog
  • Blanket bog
  • Mountain heaths and willow scrub
  • Inland rock outcrop and scree habitats
  • Calaminarian grasslands
  • Open mosaic habitats on previously developed land
  • Limestone pavement
  • Maritime cliff and slopes
  • Coastal vegetated shingle
  • Machair
  • Coastal sand dunes
  • Intertidal chalk
  • Intertidal boulder communities
  • Sabellaria alveolata reefs
  • Coastal saltmarsh
  • Intertidal mudflats
  • Seagrass beds
  • Sheltered muddy gravels
  • Peat and clay exposures
  • Subtidal chalk
  • Tide-swept channels
  • Fragile sponge & anthozoan communities on subtidal rocky habitats
  • Estuarine rocky habitats
  • Seamount communities
  • Carbonate mounds
  • Cold-water coral reefs
  • Deep-sea sponge communities
  • Sabellaria spinulosa reefs
  • Subtidal sands and gravels
  • Horse mussel beds
  • Mud habitats in deep water
  • File shell beds
  • Maerl beds
  • Serpulid reefs
  • Blue mussel beds
  • Saline lagoons

See also

References

  1. ↑ The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UK BAP) 1992–2012
  2. ↑ Cumbria biodiversity action plan
  3. ↑ UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework, Natural England
  4. ↑ "UK BAP Website". UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Joint Nature Conservation Committee. 2007. Retrieved 2009-08-06.
  5. ↑ BBC NEWS, Hedgehogs join 'protection' list

External links

The UK BAP website (http://www.ukbap.org.uk/) was in operation between 2001 and 2011, when it was closed as part of a government review of websites. The core content was migrated into the JNCC website. The National Archives preserves snapshops of UK BAP webpages predating publication of the UK Biodiversity Framework, for example copies from 2011 and 2012.

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