Greater copperwort  (Cephaloziella nicholsonii)

Greater copperwort's association with old mine workings has put its survival at risk from redevelopment and the need to make the mine shaft openings safe. There is also a problem when spoil heaps are re-landscaped, or when scrub and taller vegetation shades out the liverwort.

Greater copperwort is included in the UK Biodiversity Action Plans and is also listed in English Nature's Species Recovery Programme. In the winters of 1995 and 1996, English Nature commissioned surveys of old mine sites to establish numbers of populations of the liverwort. Further surveys carried out in East Cornwall in 1998 re-discovered greater copperwort at several of its historic sites. A register of rare bryophytes has been compiled by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

The important target for conserving this species is, initially, maintenance of the known populations, and to increase their extent where possible. It is also planned to establish ex-situ stocks of the greater copperwort as a safeguard against extinction of the wild populations.

Management of a few of the existing sites is underway, concentrating on removal of scrub which threatens the species in some of its locations. It may be possible to re-introduce it back to the site in Wales where it was formerly recorded. Work on this species will provide valuable data for the preservation of other liverworts. The Action Plan for the greater copperwort is linked with that of another rare species, the Cornish path moss, which is found in association with it at two sites.