European significance of British woodland types (ENRR460)

Increasingly, English Nature needs to relate the woodland conservation work that it does to a wider European framework. This is explicit with respect to Annex 1 types under the EU Habitats and Species Directive, but is implicit in the approaches taken to defining Priority Habitats under the Biodiversity Action Plan. English Nature’s ability to do this is limited by lack of knowledge of the abundance and distribution of woodland types on the Continent that are comparable to those in Britain. The aim of this project is to review briefly the state of knowledge on habitat distribution and abundance for these types and to indicate where it would be useful to carry out further work to fill the gaps.