Biodiversity at our Leckford Estate

At our Leckford Estate farm, we carry out a range of monitoring activities to understand the impacts of our pioneering farming techniques on biodiversity. The amount of data we collect wouldn’t be possible without the support of our amazing volunteers, each of whom gives up their time to aid the Biodiversity Officer in conducting site surveys and more.
 

Recent highlights include the Estate’s first sightings of the Willow Emerald damselfly, which, until very recently, was an extremely rare visitor to the UK, and a breeding pair of Stone-curlews – a bird species that was once reduced to only 100 pairs in Britain.
 

In 2024, volunteers from the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland investigated the diversity of arable plants around the margins of the Estate’s cropped fields. Arable flora is the fastest declining group of plants in the UK, with numbers plummeting by 96% over the past 200 years. The survey found many rare species and rated Leckford as a site of national importance for arable plants.
 

A study conducted at Leckford by the University of Reading aimed to investigate whether connectivity between hedgerows and semi-natural features, such as mature or ancient woodland, is beneficial to pollinator populations. The analysis appears to confirm there is a significant relationship between the abundance of pollinators and the availability of this connectivity – a finding we can use to help shape our ongoing work to ensure biodiversity flourishes at our farm.