Environmentally Sensitive Areas - Scotland

Published by:
Scottish Government SpatialData.gov.scot
Last updated:
19 June 2024
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
Other Licence
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Summary

Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) were identified as areas of the countryside where the landscape, wildlife or historic interest is of national importance and where these environmental features can be affected by farming operations. Features such as hedges, walls, ditches, field barns, hay meadows, heather moorland and river valley grasslands have been created by traditional farming methods over hundreds of years and are highly valued, both for their scenic beauty and for the habitats they provide for plants and wildlife. The ESA Scheme was designed to promote agriculture practices which have helped create these distinctive landscapes and have contributed to the maintenance of wildlife habitats or historic features. Introduced in 1987, the scheme formed part of the Scottish Agri-Environment Programme which was required to meet the UK Government's obligations under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The scheme allowed farmers and crofters within designated areas to have access to payments to sustain or adopt environmentally-friendly farming practices. Participation by farmers and crofters in the Scheme was voluntary. The scheme is no longer active and has been superseded by the Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS) of the Scottish Rural Development Programme. It should be noted that ESAs are not a national landscape and/or nature conservation designation. ESAs have no planning status and therefore cannot be used as a reason for refusing planning applications.

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Link to the data Format File added Data preview
ESRI Shapefile Download ZIP 19 June 2024 Not available
Environmentally Sensitive Areas N/A 19 June 2024 Not available
PS:EnvironmentallySensitiveAreas N/A 19 June 2024 Not available
EnvironmentallySensitiveAreas N/A 19 June 2024 Not available

Additional information

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Added to data.gov.uk
2023-02-03
Access contraints
Available under the terms of the Open Government Licence. The following attribution statement must be used to acknowledge the source of the information: © Scottish Government, contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [insert year].
Harvest GUID
89a2f20f-8592-4e8c-b6ad-34cf2d4fad06
Extent
Latitude: 60.87° to 54.63°
Longitude: -8.80° to -0.71°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
1996-01-01 (creation)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
Scottish Government (publisher)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

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