The Slapton Ley nature reserve is owned by the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust and managed by the Field Studies Council.[4][5] Slapton Ley’s beaches are affected by erosion but the beaches are formed from sediment; this makes them special because they are non-replaceable: once the sediment is moved it is gone. The beach can only become smaller. This threatens the security of the mainland because when the beaches are gone, mass amounts of water damage would occur on the land. The nature reserve would be destroyed and the site of special scientific interest would be lost.[6]
There is a field centre near to the Ley also run by Field Studies Council[7]
There is a large population of Cetti's warbler (Cettia cetti) at the site,[4] and Eurasian bittern (Botaurus stellaris) are resident. The British endemic millipede, Anthogona britannica, known only from sites in South Devon, was first discovered at Slapton Ley.[8][9]
Slapton Ley is the only UK site for strapwort (Corrigiola litoralis), a plant identified by Natural England as being at high risk of going extinct by 2020.[10] Seed taken from the site, and grown at Paignton Zoo were successfully replanted at Loe Pool, Cornwall in May 2015; where it had previously been recorded since 1915.[11][12][13]
Slapton Ley is remarkable for the very large number of fungi recorded there, with around 3000 species,[14] including 21 new to science, observed there up to 1996 as a result of study over many years by multiple specialists. As a result, for fungi, it is one of the most intensively explored places on the planet.[15] By comparison, the site contains only about 490 species of vascular plants, making the fungi about six times more speciose.[14] This proportion, initially derived from Slapton Ley data, has been part of the evidence used to estimate the overall number of fungal species globally.
^Bennallick, Ian J; French, Colin N; Parslow, Rosemary E (2009). Vascular Plants. In CISFBR Red Data Book for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (2nd ed.). Praze-an-Beeble: Croceago Press. pp. 105–157. ISBN9781901685015.
