Biodiversity.
What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity simply means the variety of life. It includes all
living things from the smallest flea to the biggest tree. You will
see biodiversity everywhere in the Vale: in town gardens and window
boxes, woods, roadsides, open countryside, rivers and coast.
Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is critical to our survival. We depend on it for
almost everything: food, fuel, clothing, building materials and
medicines to name but a few. Biodiversity is also very important to
our quality of life.
Anyone who lives in or has visited the Vale will know that it
supports a rich and varied wildlife: hedgerows, woodlands, river
valleys and coast shape our landscape and provide food and habitat
for mammals and birds. Wild flowers and butterflies are a common
sight on roadsides and meadows, brown hares and skylark inhabit our
farmland; otters live, unseen, on our water courses, and newts and
other amphibians breed, unnoticed, in our ponds.
This rich biodiversity is one of the things which makes the Vale
such a special area to live in.
What is the Vale doing to safeguard biodiversity?
For details of what the Vale is doing for biodiversity, please
see our Local Biodiversity Action Plan (LBAP) and
Actions for
biodiversity pages.
