AN area of the Cornish coastline is making landscape and conservation history, it was revealed yesterday.

Ecologists were able to announce with certainty that a farm on The Lizard peninsula is 10 times richer and biodiverse than it was 30 years ago.

The statistics have emerged thanks to a landmark study that went on to launch countless others across the country. It was 30 years ago this week that the National Trust carried out its very first in-depth biological survey on a farm it had acquired at Predannack, near Mullion Cove.

Now, 30 years later, the trust's survey team is back – ecologists have been working on the 70-hectare farm all week and have found that almost three-quarters of the land is now in a healthy biodiverse state compared to a mere five hectares in 1979.

Keeping a watchful eye on the team was the trust's area warden Justin Whitehouse, who has worked on The Lizard for the past 10 years.

"It's fantastic that the area I manage has got the official stamp of approval," smiled Mr Whitehouse as a group of dignitaries and high-ranking environmentalists toured the farm yesterday. "We do a lot of work with the grazing, scrub clearance and habitat management and it is nice to have the reassurance our efforts are paying off.

"If your readers had come here 30 years ago, they'd have seen a very different place – it was intensive farming and just a thin strip of marginal land then – and that was down to just a few feet in places on the clifftop. Even that was neglected. It hadn't been properly grazed for years – much of it had scrubbed over and birds like the chough had been extinct here for 40 years.

"Now the important area is spreading two or three fields back and the land is reverting to a more species-rich semi-natural maritime grassland."

The farm boasts some very rare plants – fringe rupture wort, for example, is unique to The Lizard in Britain – normally it's only found around the Mediterranean.

Hairy greenweed, long-headed clover, twin-flowered clover, also found on the farm, are also all unique to The Lizard.

Rare invertebrates like the small pearl-bordered fritillary also thrive along with the brown-banded carder bee which also nationally is on the decline. Some invertebrates even cross the Channel to live at Predannack – red-veined darter is a type of dragonfly which comes across from France with painted lady butterflies.

Dr David Bullock, head of nature conservation for the trust, said: "There are no other organisations that keep a biological survey team like ours. The team goes all over England, Wales and Northern Ireland and they get back to each trust holding every 10 years or so. We've got 2,000 tenant farmers and graziers on our land and we do a lot of work with them to help deliver high nature value.

"Here on The Lizard, it's a fantastic success story – a combination of a really spectacular site with huge natural wonders, but the grazing regime had collapsed on the cliffs because it wasn't economic. We have pushed hard to get our own animals and those from graziers – and without them, we would not have the iconic chough coming back or half the flower or insect species."