West Pennine Moors - Wildlife and Habitats

Wildlife and Habitats

The West Pennine Moors and surrounding farmland have a rich and often undervalued level of biodiversity.

On the unenclosed moorland, there are extensive areas of blanket bog on deep peat soils. Although much modified by grazing, burning and drainage, and in places dominated by purple moor-grass, characteristic species such as cotton-grass, heather, cross-leaved heath, cranberry and many species of Sphagnum moss are well represented along with restricted plants such as bog rosemary. Elsewhere on the moorland there are areas of upland heath, acid grassland and upland flushes. Moorland birds include Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, Dunlin, Wheatear, Short-eared Owl and Golden Plover. The moorlands of the West Pennine Moors have largely escaped the extensive planting of conifers suffered in some other parts of the northern uplands.

At lower altitudes, the landscape is characterised by pasture and meadows enclosed by dry stone walls. Species-rich grassland is now restricted in both area and distribution, mostly to steeper valleys or cloughs where there are also some species-rich flushes, such as those at Oak Field SSSI. Some of the more improved pastures still retain populations of breeding wading birds such as Peewit or Northern Lapwing, Snipe and Curlew, and particularly in the fields and margins around Belmont Reservoir there are Oystercatcher, Redshank and Common Sandpiper. The Reservoir itself has nationally important populations of Black-headed and Mediterranean Gulls.

Native broad-leaved woodland is also a habitat restricted almost entirely to valleys (cloughs), though there are examples of upland oak woodland, ash woodland and wet woodland dominated by alder and/or willow, such as at Longworth Clough SSSI. Along many of the reservoir valleys there are extensive areas of broad-leaved and conifer plantation such as around Roddlesworth Reservoir and Turton and Entwistle Reservoirs.