A Statement on Site Conservation has been completed by Richard Edmonds, Earth Science Manager. The statement has been compiled from the last five years of site monitoring, coupled with assessments made by Natural England and comments from others.
The headlines are that 61 of the 66 Geological Conservation Review (GCR) sites are in a ‘favourable’ condition while the remaining 5 are ‘declining’ or in ‘unfavourable’ condition, representing 7.5% of the GCR interests. These unfavourable interests represent a very much smaller proportion of the Site in terms of the physical area, (2% of the Site) as many GCR’s are quite small in geographical extent. In other words, there are only a number of small, specific problem areas relative to the whole Site. The exception is the Portland Harbour Shore which does represent a considerable problem area. All unfavourable sites were in this condition before designation as a World Heritage Site. A small number of sites represent major and perhaps intractable problems in the medium term. A number of achievable site improvements have been identified.
