SURVEYS are being carried out across North Yorkshire to record the amount of wildlife on the county's most important sites.

Surveyors are being employed by North Yorkshire County Council to record wildflowers, grasses, trees, shrubs and breeding birds.

It is hoped the surveys will help the authority's new countryside service better understand the value of existing sites and find new ones which may have been overlooked.

The sites include ancient woodland, grassland within built-up areas, parklands and ponds on farmland.

The authority is being helped by partners including district councils, English Nature, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency.

The formation of the countryside service will enable surveys to be carried out every year.

Forty are being carried in the first year.

Councillor Peter Sowray, county council executive member for environmental services, said: "Using this information will help us take positive action, where needed, at a local level.

"We want to halt any decline of these sites by focusing on how to maintain or improve their nature conservation value.

"We want to protect valuable areas now and develop new ways to provide financial assistance for those sites that may not qualify for existing grant aid and advisory schemes."

There are more than 750 Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) in the county.

Most of them are privately owned and managed, and the council is contacting landowners and tenants .

So far, more than 90 per cent have given permission for the surveyors to go on to their land.

Between 1998 and 2000, a three-year survey of SINCs was carried out across the county.

The new programme includes follow-on work from the original results as well as newly-identified potential SINC sites.

The survey programme is one a number of projects being carried out by the countryside service.

It is also involved in work aimed at conserving the historic and natural heritage of the county and providing public access to the countryside through the public rights of way nework.