While most of us are aware of unique habitats that exist elsewhere on Earth, we often don’t realise that the UK is home to its own rare physical feature – that of chalk steams. Of the roughly 200 chalk streams that are known globally, 85% of them are found in the south and east of England. Indeed, in the television series Wild Isles (2023), Sir David Attenborough called them ‘one of the rarest habitats on Earth.’
Chalk streams begin as springs in landscapes where the underlying bedrock is chalk (rocks that can be up to 60 million years old). As chalk is permeable, water flows or percolates through it easily, dissolving minerals from the rock as it flows underground.
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