A SIMPLIFIED CLASSIFICATION OF LAND-TYPE ZONES TO ASSIST THE INTEGRATION OF BIODIVERSITY OBJECTIVES IN LAND-USE POLICIES

For nature conservation to be successful, it needs to be integrated in to land-use policies over wide areas (i.e. outside those protected are as where it is itself the prime land-use), particularly agricultural p olicy. The integration of biodiversity aspects into cross-sectoral pol icies is a core of the Convention on Biological Diversity and other in ternational commitments, and has been adopted by the UK government. On e of the most important ways of conserving biological diversity is to maintain and restore characteristic regional features. To assist this, there is a need to zone the country, because measures appropriate for nature conservation and farming in one region could easily be inappro priate for both in another. Eight broad land-type zones in Great Brita in are identified to enable linking of national and international land -use policies and regional practices, particularly agricultural, to th e wildlife interest that these affect. These zones are based on enviro nmentally imposed potential, rather than actual land-use or vegetation cover. The zones should therefore have some stability. The distributi on of these zones is compared with the distributions of bird assemblag es to illustrate their relevance to nature conservation. As a pointer to future work needs, examples of main actual and potential nature con servation interest in each zone are linked to farming enterprises and the agricultural policies which underlie these.