Devon site is Britain's first biosphere reserve

One of Britain's biggest areas of sand dunes is to be at the heart of a new type of experimental nature reserve run by the United Nations.

Braunton Burrows in Devon was named yesterday as the first new-style Unesco biosphere reserve in the UK. It will join more than 400 other sites around the world, from Mount Vesuvius in Italy and the Danube Delta in eastern Europe to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, as a laboratory for examining how conservation and development can go hand-in-hand.

The dunes at Braunton are a fragile but immensely rich wildlife site, of international importance for their rare flowers, which include the water germander and very rare orchids such as the marsh helleborine.

But they are also under considerable human pressure, from tourism, farming, a golf course and a military training range. Two of north Devon's largest settlements, Barnstaple and Bideford, are near by. The new reserve, which will be known as the Bideford Bay Biosphere Reserve, extends out from Braunton Burrows to cover both towns and the estuaries of the Taw and Torridge rivers.

The local community will be involved in any new conservation, agriculture, land use and educational developments. Elliot Morley, Nature Protection minister, said: "This area will benefit from a co-ordinated approach to conserving the very precious natural habitats and environments, while taking account of the human pressures of tourism, farming industry and leisure use."

Unesco biosphere reserves were established 30 years ago, but originally they were designed only to preserve representative examples of the world's different habitats. But in 1995 they were given a new remit as areas where environment and development could go hand-in-hand.