Many heathlands in Britain suffer from the effects of fragmentation; division of the total heathland cover by barriers – areas of non-heathland across which many heathland native species cannot migrate. This limits the ability of these species to disperse and occupy all of the available favourable habitat and also to meet and breed with individuals in other metapopulations; spatially separated members of the same species.

 

Barriers can be artificial as in the case of roads or natural, consisting of stretches of woodland or other areas of non-heathland species. Whilst these barriers can have negative effects of varying severity, the species communities around the margins of sites such as Waldridge must be managed to maximize the routes individual organisms such as spiders, reptiles, amphibians or plant/moss/lichen propagules (seeds or spores) can travel to disperse into other areas of heathland.

 

 

 

 

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