Appleby Fells
There is blanket bog above about 540 m (1,770 ft), a mire dominated by hares-tail cotton grass and heather. Some peaty pools exist with Sphagnum mosses in hummocks and some bog asphodel and round-leaved sundew. In places there are carboniferous limestone crags and the grassland here is dominated by sheep's fescue, with some crested hair-grass and blue moor-grass. Forbs here include typical limestone species such as wild thyme, mountain pansy, mossy saxifrage, moonwort, limestone bedstraw, alpine scurvy-grass, alpine forget-me-not and spring gentian.
The scree areas have a different flora, and the inaccessible ledges on the crags, and in the cracks in the limestone pavement of Middle Fell and Musgrave Scar, have some taller plants such as, Pimpinella saxifraga, mountain St-John’s wort, vernal sandwort, alpine pennycress, hoary whitlow grass, lesser meadow rue and the uncommon Pyrenean scurvy-grass. On the acidic eastern slopes of the escarpment there is heathland dominated by bilberry and crowberry Vaccinium-Empetrum.
The pools and tarns provide habitat for waders including golden plover, dunlin, snipe, oystercatcher, common sandpiper and redshank, and there are also birds of prey such as merlin, peregrine falcon, raven and barn owl. Mine shafts are used by hibernating Brandt's bats and whiskered bats.
English Heritage data shows that the area includes nine scheduled monuments including prehistoric stone hut circles, field systems, cairns, shielings, and a Romano-British farmstead. It also includes the Scordale Lead Mines.