page_title: North Devon's Biosphere Reserve
section_title: Biosphere Reserve Partnership
hierarchical_section_title: North Devon's Biosphere Reserve / Management / Biosphere Reserve Partnership
caption_attribution_description: English: The River Taw at Umberleigh. Taken from the Road Bridge. The Bridge in the distance carries the railway line.
context_page_description: North Devon's Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO biosphere reserve in North Devon. It covers 55 square miles and is centred on Braunton Burrows, the largest sand dune system in England. The boundaries of the reserve follow the edges of the conjoined catchment basin of the Rivers Taw and the Torridge and stretch out to sea to include the island of Lundy. The biosphere reserve is primarily lowland farmland, and includes many protected sites including 63 Sites of Special Scientific Interest which protect habitats such as culm grassland and broadleaved woodlands. The most populous settlements in its buffer area are Barnstaple, Bideford, Northam, Ilfracombe, and Okehampton.
  The reserve was the first of the "new style" of UNESCO biosphere reserves in the United Kingdom when it was expanded from its previous area in 2002. The new guidelines encourage its management to strike a balance between people and conservation of the environment they live in through sustainability, income generation, and a reduction in poverty.
context_section_description: The management of the biosphere reserve is undertaken, on behalf of local authorities and stakeholders, by North Devon's Biosphere Reserve Partnership. The group is composed of a number of interested parties including the Ministry of Defence, Devon County Council, the Environment Agency, Natural England, some educational institutions, national park authorities, representatives from northern Devon commerce and industry, local farmers and fishermen, Devon Wildlife Trust, and the National Trust. The partnership was formed to encourage cooperation between the relevant local authorities in fulfilling their commitments to North Devon's Biosphere Reserve. The partnership is required by the statutory framework for biosphere reserves, the UNESCO Seville 95 Strategy, to develop vision and strategies for the effective functioning of the reserve.
  Its remit includes several large-scale projects which have been developed through the partnership. A£1.8 million improvement project along the River Taw, funded by the Environment Agency, is designed to decrease polluted surface runoff from fields and urban areas into the river. The project will restore habitats and remove obstacles such as weirs which prevent animals from freely moving between sections of the river. The decrease in pollution is also hoped to increase beach quality in places such as Instow, which failed water quality tests in 2012, one of only sixteen beaches in the South West to fail. A Nature Improvement Area proposed to protect and enhance the catchment of the River Torridge—home of Tarka the Otter in Henry Williamson's book of the same name—was chosen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as one of twelve nationally important landscapes which will receive funding to restore and recreate ecosystems in the area. Other large projects work to use the natural environment to offset the negative impacts of human activities within the Biosphere.
caption: Clean-up of the River Taw is part of an improvement scheme organised by the partnership.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS v", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2003:06:07 14:27:28", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "185", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1201", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6205", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:06:07 14:27:28", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:06:07 14:27:28", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "223/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "203/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "97349/32768", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "13107/200", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "255/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "800000/103", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "240000/31", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1600", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1200", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1053"}