ALMOST a third of Oxfordshire’s monitored wildlife sites have disappeared since 2009, a new report has said.

Seven of the 24 county sites monitored “had been lost altogether” from 2009 to 2013, The Wildlife Trusts’ report said.

Yet that sample – which bosses refused to name – represents only 6 per cent of the 371 designated wildlife sites in Oxfordshire.

Nationally, about 10 per cent of the 6,590 sites monitored in England had been lost or damaged since 2009, the report said.

Limited resources mean only a small fraction of sites can be monitored said the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trusts’ Giles Strother.

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Mr Strother, acquisitions and project development manager, said: “It’s only the last 60 or 70 years that we have become technically efficient in our farming.

“It’s more the changes in land use that have brought about a lot of the loss of the wildlife.

“There may have been a speeding up in the last few years, certainly nationally.”

Reasons for the loss of sites include the dumping of topsoil, mowing of grass for a caravan park and use of farming land for ponies.

More than half of the local wildlife sites are owned by farmers with most of the rest owned by private landholders.

He said 1.7 per cent of the county are a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) while 2.1 per cent are non-protected wildlife sites.

Changes to SSSI land like ploughing and removing plants require permission from Natural England.

Mr Strother said a wildlife site was “somewhere that has a good diversity of native wildlife” with threatened species.

This could include marshes, wetlands, meadows, ancient woodlands and chalk grassland.

Trust spokeswoman Wendy Tobitt said: “Because most of the local wildlife sites are in private ownership, we’re not at liberty to say where they are or give detailed information.”

The report, Secret Spaces: The Status of England’s Local Wildlife Sites 2014, is available at wildlifetrusts.org.

Its recommendations include more protection for sites, funding and volunteers.

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