GOVERNMENT proposals to designate heather moorland on the North York moors and Yorkshire dales as special conservation areas could change the ways farmers graze sheep there.

English Nature has selected 121 new areas across England to be added to the existing list of 147 conservation sites, to help protect areas of special interest which provide habitats for rare wildlife and plants.

Consultation will take place before the areas are designated as SACs.

Under the proposals, virtually all the heather moorland on the North York moors will be designated as an SAC and 85pc of the heather moorland in the Yorkshire dales.

Mr Richard Wilson, conservation officer for English Nature, explained that the aim of designating areas as SACs was to ensure organisations like English Nature set conservation objectives to maintain and manage the areas.

"If one of the features of an SAC was, for example, merlin, the objective in that case would be at least to maintain the population of merlin and, where possible, increase those populations," he explained.

"That will probably mean more careful management of, say, sheep flocks, so we might go to farmers and talk about modifications to shepherding practices and feeding practices and negotiate management agreements with them.

"Basically these SACs puts the onus on us to seek to secure positive management of these areas.

"The worst case scenario, if there was ongoing destruction and damage being caused to an SAC, is that we would have to address the problem with the individual farmer and negotiate some sort of an agreement.

"In general, though, I don't forsee any major problems on the moors or dales; in general they're managed well by farmers."

A further 116,000 hectares of land in Northumbria has also been earmarked to become SACs under this European designation. Sites include the North Pennine moors, Durham coast, Castle Eden Dene, Tyne and Allen river gravels, North Northumberland coast and dunes, and Thrislington