Local Wildlife

County Durham Wildlife Sites

From the high windswept moorlands of the west, to the beaches and cliffs in the east, County Durham contains a wide variety of landscape features. Although the region bears the scars of past and present extractive and manufacturing industries, it also contains extensive areas of great natural beauty and biological interest.

Mineral extraction, once of great importance in the western parts of the County, is now greatly reduced; with much of the land reverting to hill farming and grouse moor as the population moves gradually east. Heavy industry, in the form of Magnesian Limestone quarrying and opencast coal mining still exists in the east, and yet some of the richest botanical sites in the County are found here.

Geologically, County Durham consists of three main zones: the Permian Magnesian Limestone block, running the length of the coastline, and broadening inland from north to south; the central low-lying area of carboniferous shales, coals and sandstones; and the western dales, where the underlying limestone is capped with a layer of glacial deposits and peat.

The eastern area of the County was probably the first to be cleared of its primary post-glacial forests, and is now used mainly for farming in between pockets of industry. In places where the soils are too thin and the slopes too steep for farm machinery, patches of flowery Magnesian Limestone grassland can be found. Where the coast has been incised, forming deep ravines with almost vertical sides known as denes, woodland has often survived for hundreds of years. Along the northernmost stretch of the coast, the Permian rocks formed massive cliffs, which taper into sand dunes further south.

The central lowlands of the Wear Valley used to be the site of the great Durham coalfields, although nowadays the mines have closed. During the last 20 years the towering heaps of shale have disappeared through a series of large scale reclamation schemes. Most reclaimed land has been returned to agriculture, but on some sites consideration has been given to nature conservation.

In the western dales the wider valley bottoms are mainly mixed farmland, but on the slopes and ridges, sheep and grouse moor occupy much of the land. There are extensive stretches of plantation woodland supporting animals such as the roe deer, siskins and nightjar as well as a host of insect species.

The Durham Dales - Weardale, Teesdale and the Derwent Valley - form part of the North Pennines, one of the Country’s largest Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Upper Teesdale is internationally renowned for its unique community of arctic and alpine plants and invertebrates.

The diversity of altitude and topography, together with the influence of man are reflected in the wide variety of plant and animal life that the region supports. County Durham contains much to excite the visitor with an interest in natural history, and this website provides the opportunity to learn more about some of the County’s many wildlife sites and the plants and animals they support.

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