Introduction to the guidance manual
6. Common standards for monitoring protected sites
The Environmental Protection Act 1990 defines one of JNCC's
special functions as to 'establish common standards throughout
Great Britain for the monitoring of nature conservation ...'. In
the context of protected sites, the development of common standards
for monitoring provides two major benefits:
- It provides country agency staff with a reliable method with
which to assess the conservation status of key interest features on
their sites. This enables assessments made by different people at
different times to be compared with some confidence and enables
staff to identify changes taking place on their sites.
- Assessments from different sites can be aggregated to produce
summary reports at a range of geographical scales. This can
identify priorities for action at the local and national level.
Such aggregation is essential if the UK is to report on the
condition of designated sites across the UK, for example to meet
the reporting requirements of EU Directives.
The establishment of common standards does not mean that
monitoring has to be undertaken using prescriptive and
rigidly-applied procedures. The approach needs to be sufficiently
flexible to take into account natural geographical variation across
the UK and to accommodate the varying requirements and operational
practices of the country agencies. However, standards need to be
sufficient to ensure that consistent judgements would be made by
different staff.
- Features to be monitored
- Conservation objectives
- Judging the condition of site features
- Recording threats and management measures
- Monitoring cycle
- Reporting arrangements
6.1 Features to be
monitored
The features to be monitored are known as the interest
features for which the site has been notified or
designated. They include individual habitat types, species
and Earth science features, and also complex features such as
habitat mosaics and species assemblages. Each interest feature must
be identified, monitored, assessed and reported on
separately.
For international sites (SPA, candidate SAC, Ramsar), the
notified (interest) features are those which have been submitted to
the European Commission or Ramsar Bureau respectively on official
data forms. A master list is held by JNCC within the International
Designations Database.
For national sites, the interest feature is the feature which
has been notified by the country agency in accordance with the
SSSI/ASSSI selection guidelines (for biological features), or which
is the interest feature specified in the Geological Conservation
Review/Earth Science Conservation Review (for earth science
features). Features which have not been notified are not reported
on under the common standards.
6.2 Conservation objectives
Conservation objectives
* will be prepared for each interest feature on each site.
These objectives contain targets or target ranges which should be
met if the feature is to be judged to be in favourable condition.
Each interest feature will have one or more measurable
characteristics or attributes that together can be used to define
favourable condition (
see section 9). These attributes will
either describe an aspect of the interest feature directly or be
good indicators of its condition. The choice of target range in
relation to favourable condition is critical. It is important to
relate these to the feature under consideration, and to recognise
which fluctuations in a population are normal and are not a cause
for concern.
*
Note that SNH refers to
these as 'condition objectives'
6.3 Judging the condition of features
The following categories will be used to describe the
condition of interest features:
-
- An interest feature should be recorded as maintained
when its conservation objectives were being met at the previous
assessment, and are still being met.
- An interest feature can be recorded as having
recovered if it has regained favourable condition, having
been recorded as unfavourable on the previous
assessment.
- Unfavourable - recovering.
- An interest feature can be recorded as recovering
after damage if it has begun to show, or is continuing to show, a
trend towards favourable condition.
- Unfavourable - no change.
- An interest feature may be retained in a more-or-less steady
state by repeated or continuing damage; it is unfavourable but
neither declining or recovering. In rare cases, an interest feature
might not be able to regain its original condition following a
damaging activity, but a new stable state might be
achieved.
- Unfavourable - declining.
- Decline is another possible consequence of a damaging activity.
In this case, recovery is possible and may occur either
spontaneously or if suitable management input is made.
- It is possible to destroy sections or areas of certain features
or to destroy parts of sites with no hope of reinstatement because
part of the feature itself, or the habitat or processes essential
to support it, has been removed or irretrievably
altered.
- The recording of a feature as destroyed will indicate the
entire interest feature has been affected to such an extent that
there is no hope of recovery, perhaps because its supporting
habitat or processes have been removed or irretrievably
altered.
6.4 Recording threats and management measures
An important part of monitoring is the potential for relating
observed changes in the condition of the interest features to the
reasons for such changes. As part of the monitoring process, the
following should be recorded:
- threats occurring on, or near, the site which
may be driving features into unfavourable condition or preventing
them from achieving favourable condition; and
- management measures which may result in
improvements to the condition of features or maintain features in
favourable condition.
This information will be employed in the consideration of the
causes of observed changes in feature condition and in guiding
management action. However, it may not be possible to attribute
cause and effect from the information gained during monitoring, in
which case further investigation may be required.
All interest features on all statutory sites will be assessed
at least once within a six-year period. This corresponds to the
six-year reporting cycle used for the EC Habitats Directive.
Each individual interest feature should be monitored ideally
within the same year, and certainly within a three-year period. For
a large site (e.g. in the uplands), it may not be possible to
assess the whole of some features within one year, but the
expectation is that the assessment must be completed within three
years – this is to reduce the potential for the state of the
feature to have changed between the start and end of the
assessment.
The above remarks do not preclude more frequent monitoring if
the ecological needs of the feature justify it and the common
standards allow for such flexibility (for example, some of the
species feature monitoring set out in the guidance is more
frequent). For some species features, the guidance may recommend
that an assessment be made on the basis of records collated over
the six year monitoring cycle; where this is the case the
assessment should be made at the end of the monitoring cycle.
6.6 Reporting arrangements
Information obtained from common standards monitoring will be
used to prepare reports for a variety of purposes. For example, it
should satisfy the requirement to report on the status of
international site networks under the Habitats and Birds Directives
and the Ramsar Convention. For the SSSI and ASSI series,
information will be presented, at the UK level, using Biodiversity
Action Plan broad habitat types, an agreed set of species
categories, and categories appropriate to the Geological
Conservation Review. A report of the results of Common Standards
Monitoring (CSM) will be pulled together at least every six years.
Once the first cycle has been completed, it is likely that annual
reports will be produced, based on a rolling six year
cycle.