Border & Coastal Hills BCA

Biodiversity Character Areas have been developed by DERC to sit alongside Landscape Character Areas. They describe the landscape type and land use, main semi-natural habitats present and highlight species, species assemblages and features of particular interest.

Click here for a list of Key Species

Undulating countryside overlying sands and clays with conspicuous acid-capped hills over Greensand some with woodland others supporting heathland and acid grassland. Areas of former rough grazing and common land with heath and mire have been enclosed and planted with trees (Charmouth Forest & Wyld Warren) or have become scrubbed over (Eype Down). Ancient woodlands are mainly small and confined to sloping ground, wet land or hug the numerous sinuous streams, these would mostly have been coppiced in the past. Farmland dominates large areas with a patchwork of small irregular fields with thick hedgerows and locally numerous hedgerow trees. Species-rich grasslands are now rare but do occur around Fishpond’s, at Wootton Fitzpaine and most notably on the Golden Cap Estate where there are nationally significant areas and a fungal assemblage of international importance. Drainage is mainly south into the Rivers Char and Winnford with several minor streams.

The A35 trunk road runs through the area but many of the minor roads are narrow and winding with high banks and hedges holding a rich flora. Where the geology is soft there are spectacular holloways, especially around North Chideock and Symondsbury, which act as linear woodland forming ecological networks through the landscape. They are also of geological and cultural importance.

The whole of the coastline is within the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and is one of the longest stretches of actively eroding soft rock cliff in Britain. It has an invertebrate fauna of international importance.

The Border & Coastal Hills BCA falls within the Wootton Hills Landscape Character Area (wooded hills) and Chideock Hills Character Area (wooded) and covers xxx hectares.

Summary of Key Features

  • Clay & sand soft cliff coast line of international geological and biological importance
  • Acid-capped hills with acid grassland and heathland
  • Irregular shaped hedged fields
  • Remnants of neutral grassland with a rich flora

Issues:

  • Loss and fragmentation of semi-natural grassland
  • Historic loss of heath and mire habitat through enclosure and tree planting
  • Enrichment of watercourses
  • Visitor pressure on the coastal strip centred on the towns and around car parks

Species assemblages of importance within the BCA

  • Invertebrates of open sand & clay on slumping soft cliffs
  • Invertebrates of seepages & flushes on slumping soft cliffs
  • Lichens & bryophytes of slumping clay & sand cliffs
  • Plants of wet woodland
  • Fungi of wet woodland
  • Invertebrates of wet woodland
  • Saproxylic invertebrates associated with veteran trees and dead wood features
  • Woodland birds
  • Woodland bats
  • Plants of ancient and unimproved grasslands
  • Fungi of ancient and unimproved grasslands
    Plants of open, parched acid grassland
  • Plants of rush-pastures & fen-meadows
  • Butterflies and day-flying moths of grassland
  • Invertebrates of fens, fen-meadows and basic flushes
  • Plants of old droves, green lanes & Holloways
  • Plants of species-rich hedgerows & hedgebanks
  • Invertebrates of species-rich scrub & scrub edges