Sean Cooch, Senior Grasslands Specialist, Natural England, and Clare Blencowe, Manager SxBRC, offer their perspectives on efforts to record and protect grassland fungi. Waxcap grasslands in England: a new assessment of the distribution and conservation status by Sean Cooch.
‘Waxcap grasslands’ is now a well-established term for grasslands with a rich mycota that supports a range of species within five groups. Such habitat is threatened globally and it is highly likely that many significant waxcap grasslands have disappeared in the last 50 or more years. In 2004, the first assessment of the grassland fungi resource in England was published by English Nature and the amount of recording of grassland fungi has increased significantly since. By bringing together the last 18 years of records from multiple sources, they aim to provide a new grassland fungi gazetteer and a publicly available site layer of the most important sites in England to inform nature conservation priorities. Sussex has a relatively long history of biological recording and the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre (SxBRC) holds records of grassland fungi dating back to the early 1970s. In this talk, Clare will reflect on how knowledge of grassland fungi sites has built locally, over the years, and showcase current approaches to support volunteer recording – including an online ‘Grassland Waxcap Identification Support Tool’ and a ‘Provisional Atlas of Sussex Waxcaps’. Clare will also talk about how this evidence-base enabled to SxBRC to undertake detailed mapping of ‘mycologically-rich grasslands’ in Sussex, through a pilot project commissioned by Natural England, and discuss potential local applications for this kind of information – to support conservation of these rare and threatened habitats.