A key aspect of Defra’s 25 Year Plan for the Environment and the Environment Act 2021 is the delivery of a national Nature Recovery Network (NRN) to protect and restore wildlife in our countryside. Connectivity between such sites and other parts of the network is a key issue that helps to confer resilience to environmental pressures and change. Connectivity can take many forms, e.g. physical corridors (structurally connected) or small patches of habitat (‘stepping stones’) that occur between larger patches (functionally connected). Further, areas which may not currently contain features of conservation interest may need protecting to enhance connectivity – we need to be able to identify these, so that they can recognised as potentially important parts of the NRN.
The Condatis decision support tool developed by the University of Liverpool is designed to identify sites that are important for connectivity and for identifying where “bottlenecks” occur that restrict connectivity. This Research Project explored the applicability and utility of Condatis for identifying key areas for improving ecological connectivity at national and local scales. It developed new ways of analysing, classifying and presenting the results from Condatis that will improve its usefulness for practitioners. Results at the national scale can be used to inform national conservation planning for the NRN and Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Individual case study results are already being used to inform the development of the Nature Recovery Projects which took part, as well as providing useful information to the others which might adopt the approach in their planning.