New Forest Beech-Lichen (Enterographa elaborata)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Fungus or lichen > lichen > Lichen |
| Red List Status: | Critically Endangered (Not Relevant) [CR(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Enterographa elaborata |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (Leight.) Coppins & P. James |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Woods & Coppins, 2012 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Critically Endangered. Only two known locations in England. An internationally rare lichen of humid southern temperate woodlands. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | A specialist, strongly associated with rain tracks on the trunks of smooth bark on veteran trees with a reasonably high pH. Conservation depends on appropriate pollarding of host trees, alongside grazing reinstatement, at stronghold site in Kent. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | The maintenance and restoration of Beech and Hornbeam pasture woodlands in the south east would maintain the existing populations and could restore other unknown relict populations. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 5. Remedial action identified |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Medium-high |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Strongly associated with rain tracks on the trunks of smooth bark on veteran trees with a reasonably high pH, with two known locations in England. In the New Forest estimated from sampling as occurring on over 60 Beech trees, and on 163 Hornbeams at the Kent site. The Kent site, comprises the largest reported population in the world. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Pollard ancient hornbeams (cyclical management) and manage surrounding habitat appropriately including through grazing reintroduction.
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Habitat management
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: 1 site
High priority sites: Bockhanger Wood (Hatch Park)
Comments: The remarkable Kent site, with many actively pollarded Hornbeams, needs the pollarding maintained and grazing reintroduced and the managers have had problems achieving this which is threatening tree persistence at the site. Bockhanger Wood also supports several other threatened lichens that will also benefit and an important historic landscape as the last actively managed pollarded wood in Britain.
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Advise and support land manager on targeted conservation management, including identifying and mitigating species-specific pressures.
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: 1 year
Scale of Implementation: 1 site
High priority sites:
Comments:
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.