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The Worcestershire Vision Mapping Project

April 2005 to February 2007

A Partnership Project…

The Vision Mapping project was initiated by the Worcestershire Biodiversity Partnership in 2003 and begun in April 2005 after a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund with the aims of:

• Achieving greater engagement with the people living in Worcestershire, raising their awareness of the county’s biodiversity
• Improving the data held for the county by involving more people in biological recording
• Establishing a strategic vision for the future of Worcestershire’s wildlife through the production of biodiversity vision maps

The Forest of Feckenham was chosen as the project area for Vision Mapping.  This part of the county is a rich mosaic of ancient woodland, grassland and wetland habitats.  Within this area nine parishes were chosen as the focus of the community engagement activity: Stoke Prior, Bentley Pauncefoot, Hanbury, Stock and Bradley, Feckenham, Himbleton, Huddington, Oddingley and Hadzor.

Partnership Working…

The Vision Mapping project allowed the wider Partnership organisations to work together on a joint initiative, alongside local voluntary groups and community groups.  The project was able to help promote local recording schemes to a wider audience, including Butterfly Conservation’s Brown Hairstreak Local Champions scheme that encourages people to become involved in the monitoring and conservation of this locally significant species.  The work of the Vision Mapping project resulting in one school signing up to be the county’s first Brown Hairstreak Champion School.  The Vision Mapping project worked with the Worcestershire Recorders, the county’s biological recording community, to organise and coordinate a breeding farmland bird survey of nine red and amber list species which resulted in the collection of over 1500 records.

The Vision Mapping Process…

We adapted the community consultation mapping exercise developed by the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation (www.nif.org.uk).  Instead of Planning for Real ®, our consultation process became Biodiversity for Real, and instead of an urban neighbourhood our maps covered an entire rural parish.  Giant copies of Ordnance Survey base maps complete with clearly numbered Grid Reference lines were printed out and mounted on polystyrene tiles that could be fitted together and taken apart like a jigsaw.  The project officer and volunteers attended community events asking people to contribute information on what they valued about the natural environment of their parish and what future aspirations they had for biodiversity in their local area by writing on flags which were then stuck in the map.  The content and position of each flag was recorded by grid reference before being removed so that they did not influence the content or position of any other flags.

Representatives from Biodiversity Partnership organisations took part in a day-long visioning event in November 2006 using digital datasets and other layers of information that included location data for statutorily and locally designated sites, flood event data, historic and current land use and vegetation maps, soil types and all the information and records collected from communities in the project area.  The information was used to identify possible opportunities for the restoration, creation or enhancement of biodiversity for the Forest of Feckenham project area.  The maps produced then went out for consultation to the wider Biodiversity Partnership and some of the key community groups worked with during the project.  We did not want the Vision Maps to be rigid or time limited.  They are a work in progress dictated by the information that was available during the project’s lifetime and as more datasets become available or are revised and as more ground surveying is carried out the maps can be updated to reflect our increasing knowledge.  

A Vision for the county…

The Vision Map for Worcestershire was created from an analysis combining local ecological knowledge and the Landscape Type units (at Landscape Description Unit level) identified through the county landscape character assessment. This involved assessing the significance of each BAP habitat in relation to each landscape type and grouping habitats within the wider spatial units of Joint Character Areas.  The ecological input and analysis of BAP habitats was provided by a local expert ecologist who assigned each habitat type a score from 1-3 based on its local significance.  The county Vision Map therefore shows a summary of the distribution of BAP habitats that are of primary significance at a landscape scale.

A Vision for the Forest of Feckenham…

BAP habitats within the project area were grouped into five broad categories of woodland, orchard, wetland, grassland and arable and the maps produced at the Partnership Visioning Day along with comments received during the consultation process taken as the starting point for each vision. The maps indicate where the creation, restoration or enhancement of biodiversity might be possible, once we take into account existing land use and proximity of similar sites of value, together with the priorities and long term vision of the community.  The presence of one habitat ‘vision’ in an area does not rule out the creation, restoration or enhancement of other habitats, but denotes which habitat might be considered a priority.

The future of Vision Mapping…

Although the project itself has come to an end the maps produced along with other outcomes will ensure the sustainability of what we have achieved.

• Enabling Partnership organisations to identify and better target potential projects on the ground when the opportunity and resources arise.

• Providing a means of spatially identifying objectives for the Forest of Feckenham Biodiversity Enhancement Area.  

• Allowing the Partnership to spatially target and quantify the actions in the revised Worcestershire Biodiversity Action Plan more effectively, as well as being able to identify projects on the ground where the targets could best be achieved.  

• The maps will inform the biodiversity layer for Worcestershire to be incorporated into the Landscapes for Living project, a West Midlands Biodiversity Partnership initiative which aims to produce a 50-year vision for biodiversity across the West Midlands (see www.wmbp.org.uk).

• Best practice learned from Vision Mapping will help with the planning and success of future projects that Partnership organisations may undertake.

The Vision Maps can be seen here.  A final report and leaflet about the projects activities have been produced which are available on the Leaflets and Reports page as pdf files.  I hope you enjoy reading them and find the content useful if you are involved in biodiversity education or community engagement projects of your own.  

Thank you to everyone who has supported the project over the last two years and worked with us to make it such a success.

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