Realization that hard coastal infrastructures support lower biodiversity than natural habitats has prompted a wealth of research seeking to identify design enhancements offering ecological benefits. Some studies showed that artificial structures could be modified to increase levels of diversity. Most studies, however, only considered the short-term ecological effects of such modifications, even though reliance on results from short-term studies may lead to serious misjudgements in conservation. In this study, a seven-year experiment examined how the addition of small pits to otherwise featureless seawalls may enhance the stocks of a highly-exploited limpet. Modified areas of the seawall supported enhanced stocks of limpets seven years after the addition of pits. Modified areas of the seawall also supported a community that differed in the abundance of littorinids, barnacles and macroalgae compared to the controls. Responses to different treatments (numbers and size of pits) were species-specific and, while some species responded directly to differences among treatments, others might have responded indirectly via changes in the distribution of competing species. This type of habitat enhancement can have positive long-lasting effects on the ecology of urban seascapes. Understanding of species interactions could be used to develop a rule-based approach to enhance biodiversity.

A half century has elapsed since the appointment of an official body, the Nature Conservancy, in 1949, and the beginnings of what might be described as the modern nature conservation movement in the UK. Whilst ecologists perceived the 'heritage of wild nature' to be largely the outcome of past land use, and that the nature reserves would have to be managed consciously if their wildlife interest were to be sustained, there was only the most rudimentary understanding of how this might be achieved. Drawing for the most part on projects affecting wetlands, the paper illustrates the early steps taken to bring greater scientific rigour to reserve management. Whilst the potential for habitat restoration was recognized, there was little opportunity for its practice in the intensively-farmed countryside until grant aid was made available for such purpose from the agricultural budget in the 1980s. Where nature conservation had begun to subsume nature preservation, some fifty years ago, notions of 'creative conservation' have similarly encouraged reassessment of the purpose and practice of wildlife-resource management. This time however the challenge is being met in both the wider countryside and the built environment.