New grassland and woodland habitat management guides for Scotland

11th January 2012

Species-rich grasslands and meadows are highly threatened habitats in the UK and are key to the conservation of many important invertebrates including bees, beetles and butterflies.

[Small heath (Coenonympha pamphilus) -a grassland species © Scott Shanks) ]

Grasslands make up about one third of the Scottish landscape, however most of this is intensively managed or ‘improved’ to enhance productivity and as a consequence tends to be very species-poor. The majority of the remaining grassland is semi-improved, having been managed in the past either by drainage, ploughing, reseeding or the application of fertilisers and pesticides. The shift from hay meadows to silage production since the Second World War, has contributed to a significant reduction in grassland biodiversity. True unimproved grassland is now very rare in Scotland.

Some of the threats to grassland biodiversity include fragmentation of quality habitat, grassland improvement, and both over-grazing and abandonment. Heavily grazed grasslands have few floral species, while improved grassland that has been left unmanaged can become rank and lose floral and invertebrate diversity. The new Grassland document provides advice on how to manage meadows and species-rich grasslands for greatest benefit to invertebrates

Woodlands are one of the richest and most diverse habitats for invertebrates, with large numbers of woodland-specialist species. After centuries of deforestation, ancient woodland is a particularly rare habitat, comprising less than 1% of our landscape.Since the start of the twentieth century there has been an increase in woodland coverage in Scotland from 4% to 15%, but unfortunately much of this increase has been in non-native conifer plantations which support fewer invertebrate species. Recently the coverage of broadleaved woodland has begun to increase.