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Nature Reserve

Great Holland Pits Nature Reserve

This enchanting nature reserve was once a working gravel pit but for the last 50 years has been transformed into a flourishing wildlife haven

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Local Wildlife Sites

Local Wildlife Sites are areas of land that are especially important for their wildlife. They are some of our most valuable wildlife areas.
Habitat

Lowland heath

Heathlands form some of the wildest landscapes in the lowlands, where agriculture and development jostle for space, containing and limiting natural processes. Once considered as waste land of…

Habitat

Lowland fen

Water-logged and thick with reeds and robust tall-herbs or tussocky sedges, fens are evocative reminders of the extensive wet wildlands that once covered far more of the lowlands than they do…

Habitat

Lowland calcareous grassland

Typical of softly rolling pastoral landscapes, the short, aromatic turf of lowland calcareous grassland is flower-rich and humming with insects in the summer. Its long use by humans lends it an…

Habitat

Lowland meadow and pasture

Generally found as part of lowland farms or nature reserves, these small, flower-rich fields are at their best in midsummer when the plethora of flowers and insects is a delight. Tiny reminders of…

Nature Reserve

Howlands Marsh Nature Reserve

Take a walk around one of the best coastal grazing marshes in Essex, with its amazing display of wintering wildfowl and rare saltmarsh plants

Habitat

Lowland dry acid grassland

Sprinkled with diminutive, short-living flowers in spring and parched dry by July, this is a habitat of heathlands, coastal grasslands and ancient parkland.

Habitat

Lowland dry oak and birch wood

Gnarled veteran oaks are interspersed with groves of pale, elegant birches, while swathes of bracken and soft tussocks of wavy hair-grass cover ground from which autumn fungi sprout.…