The area is rich in bird species which permanently inhabit it or use specific habitat within the heathland for breeding. Mostly, bird species which need special protection are nightjars, woodlark and Dartford warbler, which nest on the ground utilising woods remain, grass tussock or heather bush. Nightjars are highly disturbed by human presence, more precisely by urbanization, a fact which was notified in 1979 by Berry, and confirmed lately by Liley (2002) and Clarke (2003), where humans have stronger negative effect on nightjars nesting early in the season, while there is no significant impact in late season.
Next bird, woodlark, also suffer from urban effects, and more highly by (wild and domestic) predators. A study showed that main predators are from Corvidae family and foxes (Taylor, 2002). Nevertheless, the domestic animals are considerable predators (). Full list of rare and endangered bird species with registered population size in Canford Heat are present in the Table 3.
Further, reptiles form a wide and important community within the heathland and are also under protection laws as rare and endangered species. A full list of important reptiles species is mentioned in Table 4.
Overall, there are important insects, mammals and species present in Canford Heat, and a full list with a recorded number of species of national and local importance