How to deliver the Strategy potential measures – practical guidance
In the drop down sections below, we have pulled together information from a variety of sources, to give you straight-forward practical guidance on how to carry out the potential measures set out in the Local Nature Recovery Strategy. The guidance we have included is by no means an exhaustive list, but should help you start to explore different technical approaches, and hopefully inspire you as to what is possible in your nature recovery journey! Farmers, landowners and land managers: Please consult with a land advisor before carrying out any action on your land.
If you are looking for particular practical guidance that you can’t find here, email us at naturerecovery@kent.gov.uk and we will be happy to assist you to find what you are looking for.
- Practical Guidance for Grassland Measures
Potential measure GL1.1 Maintain and enhance core, high-quality and good condition chalk grassland sites through the application of conservation management sensitive to the existing and potential flora and fauna of the site.
Potential measure GL1.2 Increase the extent of high-quality, connected chalk grassland by bringing appropriate sites, adjacent to core/good condition sites, into conservation management.
Potential measure GL1.3 Increase functional links between chalk grassland and other habitats to maximise nature-based solutions offered by improved connectivity.
Guidance on Chalk Grassland Management
Potential measure GL2.1 Increase opportunities to store winter water on land adjacent to grazing marsh to increase opportunities for ‘wetting’ during spring/summer.
Potential measure GL2.2 Deliver grazing marsh habitat restoration, extension and creation where it will offer the greatest gains to support the county’s important
grazing marsh flora and fauna and is designed to minimise recreational disturbance and reduce risk from predation.Potential measure GL2.3 Reconnect rivers with their former natural floodplain and improve the water storage ability of floodplain in order to protect against climate change impacts and drought.
Manage wet grassland for wintering waders and wildfowl
Potential measure GL3.1 Maintain and enhance core, high-quality and good condition lowland meadow sites through the application of grazing/cutting regimes sensitive
to the existing and potential flora and fauna of the site.Potential measure GL3.2 Increase the extent of high-quality, connected lowland meadow by creating new lowland meadow sites, in close proximity to core/good condition sites.
Potential measure GL3.4 Establish neutral grasslands on floodplains, to create resilience to flooding and drought and protect water quality.
Floodplain Meadow technical handbook
Floodplain Meadows – best practice
Potential measure GL4.1 Implement appropriately designed acid grassland management that prevents succession into secondary woodland and scrub encroachment. Management ensures that acid grassland is maintained and retained but not at the expense of the mosaic’s heathland resource. The grazing regime provides maximum diversity and a combination of larger open areas and smaller mosaic glades to provide habitat for breeding birds, reptiles and invertebrates. Climate resilience is built into management.
Potential measure GL4.2 Create new acid grassland sites from improved grassland and former arable sites.
Acid Grassland creation and management
Potential measure GL5.3 Design and deliver location and soil-appropriate projects, targeted in the richest arable plant areas and on a variety of soil types, to create large new areas dedicated to the promotion of arable wild plant diversity and abundance.
Threatened arable plant identification guide
Reintroducing rare arable plants to arable farmland – best practice
- Practical Guidance for Successional Habitat Measures
Potential measure SH1.1 Appropriate management plans in place for key open mosaic habitat on previously developed land (brownfield) sites, with measures that support the succession of habitats to occur naturally, increase edge habitat, create a graded profile of mixed habitat and provide features that support the species of interest most strongly tied to open mosaic habitats and, in particular, any species that the particular site in question is notable for.
Brownfield management guidance
Potential measure SH2.1 Selective conservation grazing of areas within the scrub to create open areas and allow for natural regeneration.
Potential measure SH2.2 Maintain and integrate areas of scrub within arable land, woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and urban habitats to encourage successional habitats and provide wildlife corridors.
Potential measure SH2.3 Put in place active scrub management that provides a mix of young and mature scrub, bare ground and links with surrounding habitat.
- Practical Guidance for Woodland, Trees and Hedgerow Measures
Potential measure WTH1.2 Restore and extend lowland and upland wood pasture and parkland.
Potential measure WTH1.3 Safeguard and enhance small pockets of woodland to provide key stepping stones for species movement and connect with hedgerows and scrub.
Managing and maintaining woodlands
Wood pasture and parkland guidance
Potential measure WTH2.1 Extend existing woodland through natural colonisation and planting.
Potential measure WTH2.2 Convert unproductive land for arable into woodland.
Potential measure WTH2.5 Plant more urban trees and create urban forests and orchards, ideally siting tree planting to where they will provide flood management, air quality and temperature regulation benefits.
Using natural colonisation for the creation of new woodland
Woodland creation timeline – from planning to planting
Community orchards – a “how-to” guide
Introduction to the Miyawaki method
Potential measure WTH4.2 Where appropriate, promote the restoration of plantations on ancient woodland sites to a more species-rich woodland.
Potential measure WTH4.4 Establish green bridges to connect woodlands fragmented by road and rail.
Manage and restore plantations on ancient woodland sites (PAWS)
Ancient Woodland restoration – A Series
Green bridge technical guidance
Potential measure WTH5.3 Buffer solitary ancient and veteran trees with open space, with further protections offered by establishing neighbouring wood pasture and agroforestry of mixed habitats.
Potential measure WTH5.4 Connectivity of ancient woodland improved by links to hedgerows, establishing standard trees and increasing standing deadwood.
Managing ancient and native woodland
Planting and managing hedgerows
Managing deadwood in forests and woodlands
Potential measure WTH6.1 Establish and implement long-term management plans for wet woodland and surrounding land, which ensures connectivity between waterways and woodland and incorporates nature-based water management solutions, such as leaky dams, felling, and blocking drainage channels to allow for seasonal flooding.
Potential measure WTH6.2 Create ponds within woodlands and naturally regenerated riparian zones.
Wet woodland – habitat management
Designing ponds within woodlands
Creating and managing riparian woodlands
Potential measure WTH7.1 Create buffer zones around the gill woodland to ensure they remain largely undisturbed.
Potential measure WTH9.1 Restore and bring established traditional orchards back into positive management, including maintaining long sward length, establishing wildflower meadow strips between trees, limited or no spraying, sensitive pruning and retaining dead wood/dying trees.
Potential measure WTH9.2 Establish new community orchards in appropriate areas, with a focus on urban locations.
- Practical Guidance for Freshwater Measures
Potential measure FW1.2 Undo historical physical modifications which have disconnected rivers and floodplains and restore natural processes through a range of approaches, including supplying woody material and allowing it to remain in the channel where it is not causing a flood risk, restoring channel stage zero, restoring historic meanders, bed raising, regrading banks to create shallow edges, and establishing mosaics of water meadows, wet grasslands and wet woodlands to allow inundation of floodplains above Q10 flows.
Potential measure FW1.3 Restore a more natural shape of channels by narrowing overwide channels, especially where siltation, uniform and low flows, and lack of habitat diversity are a pressure.
Potential measure FW1.4 Open up and daylight culverted rivers, streams and ditches, including ephemeral/seasonal streams where modification is redundant.
Manual of river restoration techniques
Potential measure FW2.4 Prevent road runoff entering rivers by installing sustainable urban drainage systems or similar nature-based interception features on highways and local roads.
National standards for sustainable drainage systems (SuDS)
Potential measure FW3.2 Retain and enhance habitats that support infiltration, such as grasslands, woodland, reedbeds and lowland peat. Avoid reducing infiltration in key recharge areas and around chalk stream winterbournes.
Potential measure FW3.3 Slow the flow and store water in the catchment in areas of low agricultural productivity or where there is space in urban areas, by working with natural processes to implement natural flood management e.g. by installing large woody material, and creating wet woodlands, lowland meadows, reedbeds, flood attenuation ponds and similar, especially where they can reduce flood risk and provide clean recharge to the groundwater body.
Best practice guides | The Rivers Trust
River and floodplain management
Potential measure FW4.1 Establish and maintain wide areas of semi-natural, complex habitats along the banks of rivers and streams (including seasonal and headwater reaches), allowing light grazing of wet grassland areas with a focus on native livestock breeds, and encouraging woodland, particularly where there is a need for more shading of rivers to provide cooler temperatures, by increasing riparian tree cover to 30%. Allow the natural regeneration of habitats and recolonisation.
Potential measure FW4.2 Use the redevelopment of old infrastructure as an opportunity to re-naturalise river corridors (e.g. old industrial sites).
Potential measure FW4.3 Combine buffers with the use of nature-based solutions to hold water on floodplains in areas upstream of communities at risk of flooding, and clean water. This could include, for example, large woody debris, sediment traps and floodplain wetlands.
Guidance on keeping rivers cool
River restoration and development – guidance
Potential measure FW5.2 Restore and establish wetlands in headwater areas and around natural springs by reversing and preventing further drainage of springs and seepage areas.
Potential measure FW5.3 Re-naturalise urban and modified sections of headwaters, including ephemeral streams such as winterbournes, (e.g. where they have been straightened and deepened to drain woodlands and agricultural land), including through approaches such as stage 0 restoration.
Potential measure FW7.1 Manage existing fen and bog sites to reduce encroachment, including through scrub management and appropriate grazing.
Potential measure FW7.2 Create and maintain wide buffers around existing fen and bog sites to safeguard them from diffuse pollution.
Potential measure FW7.3 Restore lowland peat habitats by reversing drainage and supporting re-wetting of areas.
Manage and restore fen, reedbed and wetland mosaics
Potential measure FW9.1 Enhance reservoirs and similar waterbodies to provide a better wildlife habitat. Ensure that any such water bodies include features that enable wildlife to get out of the water.
- Practical Guidance for Urban and Built Environment Measures
Potential measure URB2.1 Manage areas of urban green space to maximise nature provision in urban areas, providing a greater complexity of habitats, with year-round shelter, forage and food.
Potential measure URB2.2 Naturalise urban river corridors by removing river obstacles where appropriate and replacing hard river banks with native buffer verges and riverside trees.
Potential measure URB2.3 Target urban tree establishment to areas of low canopy cover.
- Practical Guidance for Coastal Measures
Potential measure CL1.3 Remove hard defences where appropriate (ensuring that both the natural and built environment is not at risk of inundation, damage or loss as a result), to allow space for tidal ingress and to enable the managed realignment of the coastline, to mitigate coastal squeeze and to allow intertidal habitats to be more resilient to climate change.
Potential measure CL1.4 Create areas for saltmarsh restoration, seagrass regeneration and high-tide roosts, and provide breeding areas for seabirds and/or waders, with appropriate measures to prevent or reduce disturbance and predation.
Design principles for estuary edges
Saltmarsh restoration handbook
Potential measure CL2.2 Restore small-scale saltmarsh using traditional materials to slow down loss.
Potential measure CL2.3 Create new high-tide roosts in areas less vulnerable to rising sea levels.
Potential measure CL2.4 Link areas with other wetland habitats to form a landscape mosaic of wetlands to reduce the tendency for waders and seabirds to be concentrated at key hotspots and reserves.
Saltmarsh restoration handbook
Potential measure CL3.1 Address threats to seagrass beds by putting in place management which:
– reduces and addresses pollution sources that impact seagrass restoration and growth
– removes invasive spartina where it is known to be invading, smothering or limiting seagrass extension and restoration.
– minimises damage from boat anchors, dredging, fishing and trampling.Potential measure CL3.2 Increase areas of existing seagrass beds.
Potential measure CL5.1 Safeguard established areas of Native Oysters and Blue Mussels by developing protected areas with management measures, in collaboration with local stakeholders, including the local fishing community.
Potential measure CL5.2 Where practical, remove invasive non-native species from the beds of Native Oysters and Blue Mussels.
Potential measure CL5.3 Create suitable substrate for native oysters to colonise, focusing on existing/historic areas, and address the lack of larvae in the landscape.
Potential measure CL5.4 Create suitable substrate for Blue Mussels to colonise, focusing on existing/historic areas.
Native oyster restoration handbook
Potential measure CL6.1 Safeguard existing saline lagoons from loss and damaging activities that harm and/or pollute the lagoons.
Potential measure CL6.2 Establish buffer zones and/or adjust site features and topography to ensure the ecological function of saline lagoon is not undermined by disturbance, and enhance marginal habitat.
Potential measure CL6.3 Create new saline lagoons to connect wetland sites in transitional areas that are likely to flood, taking into account their proximity to sources of recreational disturbance.
Common standards monitoring guidance for saline lagoons
Potential measure CL7.1 Safeguard existing habitat through access management and interventions (e.g. allocated routes and boardwalks) that minimise the impact of footfall and recreational disturbance on this delicate habitat.
Potential measure CL7.2 Safeguard and extend supporting habitats, such as species-rich grasslands, next to coastal shingle that can act as seepage areas and support a mosaic of habitats for important coastal shingle species.
Manage and restore vegetated shingle
Potential measure CL8.1 Manage dunes to reduce scrub encroachment, remove invasive species and reduce disturbance pressures of recreational activities. Management to include year-round low-intensity grazing in the absence of endectocides, and with high-quality fodder in winter to maintain high dung quality.
Potential measure CL8.2 Enable more naturalised and mobile sand dune systems through a full range of successional stages of sand stabilisation across the dune system, from mobile sparsely vegetated foredunes, young dunes with dense Marram Grass clumps, to more established dunes with varied vegetation, stable sandy grassland or heath, open sandy areas and dune slacks. Address overstabilisation of the dunes to increase dune mobility and sand movement.