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.