Salisbury Plain Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Area (SPA) cover 19,690 hectares (ha), which is about half of the wider military training area. It is notified for 25 features: chalk grassland, the Nine Mile River, juniper habitat, rare plants, invertebrates including marsh fritillary butterfly and fairy shrimp, and birds including stone curlew and wintering hen harrier.
The SSSI Favourable Condition Tables (FCT) list the notified features, with attributes and targets for managing and monitoring each. The FCT has undergone considerable development over the years, including some refinement of the features in 2015, based on the legal document, the Citation (see Appendix 1 – Salisbury Plain SSSI Citation).
Condition Assessment, now called Integrated Site Assessment (ISA), of these features, at unit level, was last carried out in 2008; and the aim of this project was to do a representative and robust, fresh, assessment of a significant proportion of the SSSI over two fieldwork seasons in 2014 and 2015.
Appendix 6 and 7 are available on request by emailing technicalinformationexchange@naturalengland.org.uk.
Project details
| Start date | 2014-05-01 |
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Closing statement
The report conclusions provide a summary of the findings and further questions.