ABOUT THE
BIOSPHERE
What is a Biosphere Reserve?
A Biosphere Reserve is an area that has been recognised by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, yes, the United Nations!) for its combination of ecological and cultural diversity and its desire to see these qualities used to support a sustainable and resilient way of life for the people who live and work there.
Biosphere Reserves are designated by UNESCO but rely on local cooperation to ensure the careful management of built and natural resources, creating better conditions for future generations. To fulfill the criteria for Biosphere Reserve, people must live in the area and this aspect of human involvement is essential to Biosphere Reserves.
The Isle of Wight Biosphere
© Visit Isle of Wight
© Visit Isle of Wight
Our Biosphere Reserve covers the whole of the Island's surface (380km square) and all inshore waters (535km square). The population is around 140,000 people.
Covering the island and surrounding seas, our reserve is a home for rare species such as red squirrels and glanville fritillary butterflies and an internationally important site for dinosaur finds. Traditionally reliant on agriculture and tourism, increasingly local businesses embrace sustainable practices in farming, fashion, food and drink, the visitor economy and more.
75% of the land is specially designated for wildlife and landscape, with rewilding zones , wetland nature reserves, a white-tailed sea eagle reintroduction programme and seagrass restoration projects.
We were awarded Biosphere Reserve in 2019. For more on this process see the original nomination form and a map of the biosphere zones on our Resources page.
Read on for background on each of the three areas of our Biosphere Reserve: The Solent Shores, the 33 Parishes, and the Channel Coast.
Illustrations by Carim Nahaboo.
The Solent Shores
The Isle of Wight Biosphere covers more than the terrestrial environment of the Island, it also extends substantially out into the surrounding coastal waters, in fact the marine component is 60% of the whole designation.
The larger part of this seascape is The Solent, stretching from The Needles in the west, to Hayling Island in the east, one of the busiest commercial and recreational waterways in the world with over 79,000 shipping movements, 1.2 million container movements, 170 cruise ship arrivals, and 22 million tonnes of crude oil shipped to Fawley refinery.
At the same time, it is one of the most important coastal wildlife sites in the UK, supporting hundreds of thousands of wading birds and wintering wildfowl across its estuaries and sheltered shores. This challenging balance, between the demands and requirements of the human and non-human worlds, is of course at the heart of the Biosphere project.
The 33 Parishes
No matter where you are on the Isle of Wight, you will be within one of the Island’s 33 Parishes that together make up the fundamental social and community geography of the county, covering every part of the land surface.
Each Parish has its own special character, its own towns and villages, and its own story to tell. Some, such as Arreton, or Newchurch, are remarkably ancient, stretching right back to Anglo-Saxon settlement and still have visible landscape and architectural features created in those times. Others were established very much later, for example Ryde in 2008.
These differing time-depths bring with them different perspectives and outlooks on Island life, creating a rich cultural diversity that is as important to the UNESCO designation as its environmental and ecological qualities. There are 33 ways to explore the Isle of Wight Biosphere, each with its own collection of built and natural places, parks, gardens, trails, heritage and wildlife, and each with its own special sense of community.
The Channel Coast
The 50km coastline that runs from Culver in the east and around the south of the Island to The Needles in the west, opens directly onto the English Channel and is a much more exposed and energetic environment than the sheltered Solent.
The Island’s soft geology is largely unprotected here, except for sea defences in Sandown Bay, Ventnor and Freshwater, and the natural processes of coastal erosion have created a wild and dramatic scenery of cliffs and terraces, steep Chine valleys and active landslips. The Island’s oldest rocks, dating back 120 million years to the Cretaceous period, make up the soft cliffs at Yaverland and between Atherfield and Compton.
Here the famous Wealden Beds reveal extraordinary fossil remains of dinosaurs such as Iguanodon, Spinosaurus and Ankylosaurus (over 20 species in all) making the Island the most important location for dinosaur discovery in Europe.
