Protecting the New Forest’s Exceptional Freshwater Habitats
Freshwater Habitats Trust is a national wildlife conservation charity with the aim of halting and reversing the decline of freshwater biodiversity through building a network of wilder, wetter, cleaner and connected freshwaters.
The New Forest is home to some of the best examples of freshwater habitats – not just in the UK, but in the world. Through analysing data such as species records and working with local species experts, we have identified 24 Important Freshwater Landscapes (IFL) across the UK including the New Forest and Dorset Heaths, which is noted to be one of the richest IFLs in terms of rare species per square kilometre and hosts a wealth of Species of Conservation Concern (SoCC). This exceptional biodiversity can be partly attributed to areas of clean and unpolluted freshwater (which still exists in the New Forest) in combination with the longstanding tradition of grazing by Commoner’s livestock across the open Forest.
Unfortunately, the story in the New Forest isn’t all positive. What we also see is a decline in a landscape that should otherwise be free from pollution. This strongly suggests that the Forest faces similar environmental pressures to the rest of the country, whereby sources of pollution input are altering water quality. Data from our most recent New Forest WaterBlitz (2022/23) shows a 6% deterioration in water quality since 2016, despite the work of the Catchment Partnership to implement nutrient pollution controls with landowners and raise awareness of nutrient pollution issues. Our data shows that the majority of the polluted waterbodies tested were located outside of the core of the Forest, where there is greater urbanisation, intensive agriculture and modified habitat land use. In comparison, 73% of waterbodies tested in the core of the Forest, which is dominated by semi-natural habitats, were found to be clean and unpolluted.
Protecting the best remaining freshwater biodiversity hotspots is at the heart of our vision to build the Freshwater Network. As such, our vision for the New Forest is to protect the high-quality habitats that remain in the core of the Forest and build out from them, expanding upon these biodiversity hotspots to create a network of healthy, unpolluted and interconnected freshwater habitats will allow species to spread across the landscape. We aim to achieve this through our two main work programmes: Blue Horizons and Wilder for Water. Look out for our next two blogs to learn more about these programmes.
If you’re interested in keeping up with our work, or if you’d like to learn more, please do follow us on social media (FHT New Forest) and sign up to receive Waternews, our Catchment Partnership newsletter.
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For enquiries, please contact info@freshwaterhabitats.org.uk.
