Durham Biodiversity Partnership

Durham Hedgerow Survey 2006

The Durham Biodiversity Partnership has recently undertaken a comprehensive survey of hedgerows in the Durham area (which includes Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Darlington and County Durham).

The Partnership secured funding from DEFRA and Durham County Council has provided additional staff support for the project, and has lead the work on the survey.

The aim of the survey was to gather good quality information on the overall hedgerow resource, based on a measurement of it's overall length and an estimate of its condition. It was also designed to provide some comparison with previous surveys and a baseline against which progress can be measured in the future.

Results

The highlights of the survey report which has been produced include the following:

• Since 1979 an estimated 21% of the hedgerow resource has been lost in Durham.
• Only 17% of hedgerows are estimated to be in favourable condition (as defined by DEFRA).
• The majority of hedgerows are in unfavourable condition primarily because they are gappy or because the canopy height at the base is too high (i.e. they are 'leggy'). This can be due to lack of management or sometimes too severe and frequent cutting.
• Neglect is the biggest threat to our hedgerows, 62% of which are estimated to be unmanaged.
• We will need to recruit approximately 580 'isolated' trees into hedgerows every year to ensure that we retain the current number of isolated trees in hedgerows across Durham . This will involve new planting, but also tagging and retention of existing saplings in hedgerows.

A longer summary of the results and recommendations for future work, as well as the full survey report, are available below:

Hedgerow Survey 2006
Hedgerow Survey Result Summary

FIELD NOTES Summer 2007- Newsletter of the Durham Biodiversity Partnership -
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