y migratory birds.
The economy of North Devon is largely supported by tourism. Four million people per year visit the area, and visitor numbers can rise as high as 60,000 per day in August. Most of these people come because of the environment.
North Devon's Biosphere Reserve is in northern Devon in South West England. Although mainly in the districts of North Devon and Torridge, the reserve also extends into West and Mid Devon. It covers a large area of sea up to 160 feet (49 m) in depth off the North Devon coast and includes Lundy island 12 miles (19 km) from the shore. The core area is centred on Braunton Burrows, a large sand dune system, which consists of 19 sq mi (49 km2) of sand dunes, slacks (troughs between the dunes), grassland, scrub habitat, and a part of the Taw-Torridge Estuary. The reserve's boundary follows the edges of several river catchment areas, mainly of the River Taw and the River Torridge, but also those of smaller rivers running into the sea between Hartland and Lynton. The North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty lies at the heart of the reserve, while parts of the national parks of Dartmoor and Exmoor fringe the boundaries.
There are no cities within the reserve. Barnstaple, Bideford, Ilfracombe, Braunton, Northam and Great Torrington contain many of the 155,000 people living in the wider buffer area of the Biosphere. The surrounding towns and villages are also included in reserve projects and policy decisions.
There is evidence of humans in North Devon from Mesolithic times onward. Worked pieces of flint or stone, known as flint scatters, that date to this era have been found around Baggy Point in an area where flint does not occur naturally. In the clays beneath the sand of Westward Ho! beach there is a Mesolithic midden, a prehistoric dump for domestic waste, composed of mussels, cockles, peppery furrow shells (Scrobicularia plana), and carpet shells (Venerupis spp.). On Exmoor the remains of small flint tools called microliths, used by hunter-gatherers to hunt and prepare animals, have been found and date to the late Mesolithic. In the Neolithic period, people started to manage animals and grow crops on farms, and started to cut down the woodlands of Exmoor, rather than act purely as hunters and gatherers. These Neolithic people created stone monuments and by the Bronze Age were creating barrows (burial mounds) and roundhouses. Evidence shows that extraction and smelting of mineral ores to make metal tools, weapons, containers and ornaments had started by the Iron Age. Bronze Age barrows have also been found on elevated parts of Bursdon Moor, near Hartland and on Berry Down, near Berrynarbor. Iron Age hill forts were built on prominent parts of the coastline and hinterland. Examples can be found at Hillsborough near Ilfracombe, Embury Beacon and Clovelly Dykes in the Hartland area, with numerous other examples along the coast.
questions the World faces today: How can we reconcile conservation of
biodiversity and biological resources with their sustainable use?
Many villages and hamlets may be found within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), most dating back to Saxon times and many recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Grade I-listed remains of medieval architecture can be found in Combe Martin, Berrynarbor and in the hamlet of Stoke, near Hartland.
In 1959 the North Devon Coast was designated as an AONB, the first in Devon. In 1976, Braunton Burrows was designated a biosphere reserve under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme, with a focus on research questions and on environmental conservation. The reserve was greatly expanded in 2002 under a new set of guidelines that promoted the interactions of mankind with nature in terms of sustainable living, income generation, and reducing local poverty. It became the first of these "new style" biosphere reserves in the United Kingdom. The dune system of Braunton Burrows was re-designated as the core area of the biosphere reserve under the revised goals. Since its recognition, the AONB had no management service until the