Hadleigh Park priority species habitat assessment

Hadleigh Park (HP) SSSI (TQ800869) was a key site for delivery of the 2012 London Olympics hosting the Olympic mountain biking course. As part of the legacy from this event an Ecological Management Plan was developed to conserve and enhance the ecological value of the site. This was to be achieved through a series of strategies: 1) To increase habitat extent and improve habitat quality through enhanced habitat management. 2) To enhance habitat connectivity across the foothills by restoring an existing 'weak-link' of arable land to permanent grassland. 3) To develop and fund a programme of ecological monitoring. In order to fulfil some of the requirements of the ecological monitoring target of the strategies, invertebrate habitat assessment surveys were established during the summer of 2015 to create a baseline for monitoring the effects of current and future habitat management on the site. This included delivering invertebrate surveys focused on habitats/assemblages that the operational use of the legacy may affect and that are associated with the SSSI designation. The focus of these surveys would be in Compartments 1, 2 and 3a (Figure 1). The aim being to obtain results on which ISIS analysis could be carried out to provide common standards monitoring invertebrate assemblage information. The results of these surveys are available in Harvey (2015). Additional surveys were carried during the summer 2015 in order to create a baseline for monitoring the habitat quality and the effects of legacy habitat management at Hadleigh Park on priority target species and groups. These comprised white-letter hairstreak butterfly (Satyrium w-album) surveys, bumblebee (Bombus spp.) surveys - with specific focus on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species (now the UK Post-2010 Biodiversity Framework) and Section 41 of the NERC Act Listed species, the brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis), the shrill carder bee (Bombus sylvarum) - and bumblebee forage availability surveys. This report represents an overview of these additional surveys. The report is divided into three sections in order to document the three separate survey methodologies.