Page 30 - Annual Review 2022

The Land Trust Annual Review 2022

Field surveys As a key action of our BEE Strategy and to assist with the delivery and Hassall Green Nature Reserve,
were undertaken reporting of its Environment and Biodiversity KPI, the Land Trust appointed Sandbach
WSP UK Ltd to assess the habitat and biodiversity baseline of its estate.
of ten Land Trust
sites, covering a A habitat baseline was established using a desk-based assessment of the sites
third of the directly owned and managed by the Land Trust at 31st March 2022. This was
informed by a number of data sources including existing primary baseline data,
assessed estate, publicly available open source datasets, and remote sensing data.
to update and
inform the Acknowledging the limitations of a desk based assessment, field surveys were
undertaken of ten Land Trust sites, covering a third of the assessed estate, to
strategic update and inform the strategic baseline.
baseline
In turn, this habitat baseline informed the biodiversity baseline using the
Biodiversity Metric 3.1 and taking into account certain assumptions and caveats;
allowing the Land Trust to quantify the biodiversity value of its estate. Whilst there
are limitations to Metric 3.1 and future versions, it has been developed by DEFRA
and Natural England to be used as a standardised, habitat based approach to
determining a proxy biodiversity value.

The Land Trust will use the baseline to inform environmental decisions, monitoring
and reporting change, and allowing the Land Trust to deliver the three key themes
of its BEE Strategy, as outlined above.
Results

Habitat Distinctiveness Land Trust Area
Very High Distinctiveness 61.99
High Distinctiveness 602.96
Medium Distinctiveness 818.02
Low Distinctiveness 596.99
Very Low Distinctiveness 89.36

Broad Habitat Type Land Trust Area
Coastal saltmarsh 4.02
Cropland 8.95
Grassland 1022.08
Heathland and shrub 227.43
Lakes 44.55
Sparsely vegetated land 87.98
Urban 130.59
Wetland 34.16
Woodland and forest 772.84

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