Heath

Heathland is dwarf shrub vegetation usually dominated by heather and gorse. Heath communities are relatively species poor, with ling heather being the most frequently occurring shrub. Other characteristic heathland plants include bilberry, cotton grass and bell heather. An important feature of a heath community is its age structure. Heather shrubs can live for thirty years and have different growth forms at different stages of their lives, creating a variety of small habitats known as ‘microhabitats’. A good quality heathland will have a diverse age structure and may support over five thousand invertebrate species, including many butterflies.

Most heath is thought to have been created during the Bronze Age when trees were cleared to provide land on which to graze livestock.

Heather plants became established on nutrient poor acid soil and livestock were put out to graze on the young, tender shoots. Heather became a valuable resource used for fuel and thatch, and the combination of low level cutting and grazing allowed large areas of heath to develop.

Britain is home to a significant proportion of European heathland, although much of this habitat has been lost over the past 50 years. County Durham contains a spectrum of heath communities ranging from the high blanket mires of the west to fragments of lowland heath in the east. These habitats used to be much more widespread in the County and throughout Britain, but a combination of agricultural intensification and opencast coal mining has led to the destruction of many former heathland sites.

In the west of the County heather moorland with bilberry, heath bedstraw and crowberry is traditionally managed for grouse and grazed by sheep. It is valuable habitat for breeding birds such as the red grouse, merlin and golden plover and is specially protected to help conserve these species. The lowland heaths of the east are very fragmented and many of the remaining sites are in danger of being taken over by bracken.

The massive destruction of heath communities in Britain is a cause for grave concern, and lowland heath is now a priority habitat on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Careful management is needed to help safeguard the future of remaining upland and lowland heath communities. This may include low level grazing, rotational burning on moorland sites and scrub clearance and bracken control where necessary. Heathland habitat depends on the maintenance of low nutrient acid soils, so the use of lime or fertilizer must be avoided on these sites. Where open cast coal mining has destroyed areas of heathland it is sometimes possible to recreate these communities after extraction ceases.

This website contains further information on the following heaths:
Waldridge Fell - (Durham County Council)
Quaking Houses Fell - (Durham County Council)
Pity Me Carrs - (English Nature)
Moorhouse Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve - (English Nature)
Harelaw Heath

Habitats