Quarries, Wildlife and Landscape

We all know that mineral sites can be great for wildlife, often acting as a haven for species who would otherwise find it difficult to occupy an area. For instance, landscape buffer trees often form the largest area of woodland in the locality and act as a refuge for owls and other birds of prey, bats and a ‘laying up’ area for hares and other mammals.

Belfast Hills Partnership have been working for some time with our mineral producer partners along with other partners such as the Woodland Trust. We now want to offer an even wider range of assistance to quarries and other commercial companies to go beyond any woodland planting and other biodiversity improvements to maximise the positive impacts of site on local wildlife.

A good example is a major planting project to the southern end of the Belfast Hills.

This scheme has created with the help of the Woodland Trust new broadleaf woodland on a 9ha site at the Lisburn end of the Belfast Hills owned by Whitemountain (part of the Breedon Group). These 13,000 trees – one for every young person BHP worked with through its ‘Our Bright Future’ youth programme - will sequester over 3,000 tonnes of carbon and provide a rich habitat for local wildlife. A number of the young people in the project completed their involvement by planting up on site. Russell Drew Environment & Estates Manager for Whitemountain said “We are proud to be part of this project – just as the young people are growing up and making a positive change to their local environment, so these trees will grow up and benefit the people and wildlife surrounding the Belfast Hills”. A vital part of this project has been initial surveying, which identified a portion of the proposed site as already being of high biodiversity value, species rich grassland. The value of this site is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is adjacent to Slievenacloy, an Area of Special Scientific Importance

Jim Bradley.

due to its species rich grassland, purple moor grass and insect life. This highlights some interesting developments in moving beyond looking at sites for only their own value within the boundary fences. Quarries and waste sites can play a vital part in managing whole landscapes for wildlife. They can become not just islands of wildlife, but essential links between developing sites of new woodland, wetlands or pollinator areas, they can be the important hubs in themselves which act as stepping stones for species moving through a landscape. Those sites which have heavily controlled access can often nest sites for threathened species which are particularly sensitive to human disturbance. It is therefore clear that quarry sites are not just of great value in themselves - they are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining healthy wildlife species and habitats across many of our key landscapes. In the case of the Breedon site, local wildlife enthusiasts are working in partnership with the owners to maximise the wildlife value of the site through installation of owl and bat boxes – with rapid impacts in weeks rather than months. Working on their own initiative or in partnership, Belfast Hills companies have over the years facilitated a tree nursery, newts ponds, wildflower meadow planting, sand martin banks, and woodland creation. We believe that when carbon sequestration and habitat link mapping projects are fully developed soon, that these sites will become ever more vital to protecting and enhancing our local wildlife right across the Belfast Hills landscape.

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