lso directly affect humans when transported by rainwater to rivers and the sea where people swim. Another problem is river sedimentation caused by fine soil particles washing from the land into rivers, this causes high rates of mortality in fish eggs and can affect fish feeding habits. The Biosphere Reserve Partnership provides support to farms that encourage sustainable practices, benefit the environment, and have a good role within the community.
North Devon's Biosphere Reserve contains many nationally important habitats including culm grassland (Molinia caerulea and Juncus spp.), broadleaved woodlands, estuaries, and coastal heathland. A 10-year Biodiversity Action Plan for the reserve identifies actions that can be carried out by the partnership to help nature conservation, learning, and research. It also contains 63 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), 671 County Wildlife Sites, a Special Area of Conservation, and six Local Nature Reserves.
The Braunton Burrows core area consists of fixed and mobile sand dune systems with geomorphological and successional processes. There are also variable-flooded slacks, grassland and scrub further inland supporting a wide variety of flowering and lower plants, birds, and insects. It includes the complete successional range of dune plant communities, with over 400 vascular plant species. It is characterised by marram grass (Ammophila arenaria), round-headed club-rush (Scirpoides holoschoenus), sharp rush (Juncus acutus), and willow (Salix) species. On the strandline there is rock sea lavender (Limonium binervosum). The fore and mid dunes are generally sandy yellow dunes, colonised and stabilised by marram grass. Other notable species include sea stock (Matthiola sinuate), sea stork's-bill (Erodium maritimum), sea clover (Trifolium aquamosum), Portland spurge (Euphorbia portlandica), sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias), and white horehound (Marrubium vulgare). Further inland, the stable grey dunes are stabilised by other species such as dune fescue (Vulpia membranacea). The dune slacks, the valleys between the dunes, may flood after heavy rain and are wet and marshy during the winter. They support round-headed club-rush (Scirpoides holoschoenus), sharp rush, round-leaved wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia ssp. maritima), early gentian (Gentianella anglica), and many orchid species. Listed as endangered on the Joint Nature Conservation Committee's Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain, the water germander (Teucrium scordium), a perennial plant that lives in the slacks, has just one other population in the UK.
Behind the dunes, grassland, or dune pasture, supports a variety of grasses, sedges and herbs including rough poppy (Papaver hybridum) and toothed medick (Medicago lupulina). Scrub invasion occurs with native species such as willows, privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and common blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), and introduced species such as sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides). The scrub and grazed vegetation supports lichens such as the sausage lichen (Usnea articulata) and scrambled-egg lichen (Fulgensia fulgens), and around 60 species are found in the compacted soils.
Braunton Burrows, along with the Taw-Torridge Estuary (also an SSSI), is a main route for bird migration along the west coast of Great Britain. Waterfowl winter on the shores of the sea and estuary, while the coastline supports a variety of breeding species such as whitethroats (Sylvia communis) and magpies (Pica pica) in the scrub; skylarks (Alaunda arvensis) and meadow pipits (Anthus pratensis) in the grassland; and wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe) and shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) in holes or burrows. Invertebrates are abundant throughout the dune system, which includes 30 species of terrestrial or freshwater molluscs, including the sandbowl snail (Catinella arenaria), which is only known in two sites in the UK.
The characteristic and notable species outside the core area include sea purslane (Halimione portulacoides), Salicornia spp., pea crabs that live inside mussels, lugworm, Hydrobia snails, and annual sea