Saving the planet but losing the landscape: the impact of renewable energy policies on rural Britain

The main instrument of the Government's renewable energy policy is to promote wind power through regulation and subsidy. This gives rise to anomalies in rural planning when turbines are erected in sensitve areas in which other forms of development are strictly controlled. The situation is reviewed in the context of economic viability and considered also against the alternative of growing fuel crops. The latter are currently hampered by lack of Government support but could fulfil a useful secondary role of sustaining the agricultural sector and with it the management of lowland landscapes.

The Stonehenge landscape habitat restoration project: conservation opportunities for rare butterflies?

Landscape restoration has the potential to mitigate habitat loss and fragmentation. However, restoration can take decades to reach the ecological conditions of the target habitats. The National Trust’s Stonehenge Landscape Restoration Project provides an opportunity to evaluate the ecological benefits against the economic and temporal costs. A field survey between June and September 2010 using Lepidoptera as bio-indicators showed that restored grasslands can approach the ecological conditions of the target chalk grassland habitat within 10 years. However, specialist species like Lysandra bellargus (Adonis blue) were absent from restored grasslands and may require additional management to assist their colonisation. Analysis of the Lepidoptera communities showed that both small-scale habitat heterogeneity and age of the habitat were important for explaining Lepidoptera occurrence. These results demonstrate that habitat restoration at the landscape scale combined with appropriate site-scale management can be a relatively rapid and effective method to restore ecological networks and buffer against future climate change.