Over the past couple of months, I have been working with Cumbria Wildlife Trust to set up a scrub management experiment at Hutton Roof. Increased colonisation by tree species, such as sycamore, is a major threat to limestone pavements. Once tree cover becomes dense, the closure of the canopy makes grikes too dark for certain plant species to survive. Leaf litter from the trees and the spread of thick mosses can also clog up grikes, meaning less room for limestone pavement specialists.

We don’t yet know the best ways to manage this issue. Managing scrub in open areas of pavement is the current approach but this is not based on scientific evidence. My PhD is helping to address this and two experiments, at Gait Barrows and within Holme Park Quarry, have been established to evaluate the effectiveness of scattered scrub removal for maintaining the plant communities of open limestone pavements.

Additionally, I have set up a dense scrub removal experiment to explore the possibilities of restoring wooded limestone pavement to open pavement. If limestone pavement flora recolonises the cleared plots it could be possible to reclaim wooded areas at the edge of open limestone pavement and expand the overall area of the habitat. A failure to restore plant communities is equally important to understand as this would emphasise the importance of managing newly colonised scrub in open pavement. It will also be interesting to see whether pollinator species, which favour the warm microclimates of open pavement, begin to utilise the cleared areas.

The different types of experiment that we have set up will provide us with important evidence for the success of different management techniques. This will be crucial for informing the future management of the habitat and knowledge shared through the Limestone Pavement Partnership will ensure best practice across sites.

Setting up the experiment has been tough work and would not have been possible without Scott Petrek of Cumbria Wildlife Trust and an incredible group of volunteers who we thank for all their hard work – the results of which speak for themselves in the before and after photos below. Their commitment to conservation is inspiring and we at Lancaster University are very grateful for their hard work.

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