NEWS
Report { BIODIVERSITY
The value of restoring nature to brownfield sites By Laura Edgar It has been a kind of mantra for a while now: prioritise brownfield land for development. Protect green spaces, greenfield and the green belt. Successive Conservative governments have all prioritised brownfield land for development. Back in 2014, under David Cameron, then chancellor George Osborne announced plans to allow developers to build on almost all brownfield sites, with a wider aim to encourage the building of up to 200,000 homes on sites designated as brownfield that are not in use. In 2016, then communities secretary Greg Clark, launched a pilot for brownfield registers, which was extended to all English councils in 2017. Such land is deemed an eyesore, but it can offer more biodiversity than some greenfield and green belt sites. A study published in January this year found that former mining areas in northern England had become a refuge for one of Britain’s fastest-declining resident bird species, the willow tit. Numbers have plummeted by 92 per cent since the 1970s. The RSPB classifies its conservation status as red, meaning that urgent action is needed to address the decline. But according to the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, willow tits have over the past 50 years retreated to former coal mining areas from Cheshire to Northumberland. Wilding of a Post-industrial Site Provides a Habitat Refuge for an Endangered Woodland Songbird, the British Willow Tit Poecile montanus kleinschmidti considered why willow tits fare well at these sites.
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Willow tits can now be found at former coal mining areas from Cheshire to Northumberland
marsh and woodland, with shallow Over three years, Dr Richard lakes and pools formed by mining Broughton worked with Marta Maziarz subsidence. Because the area was from the Polish Academy of Sciences worked until the 1990s, the colonising and local citizen scientist Wayne Parry woodland is relatively young. to conduct surveys at former mining Broughton told The Planner this gives sites on the Wigan Flashes (see box) willow tits an edge before it matures and Amberswood Common, which have and becomes more suitable for their been restored to wetlands, woodlands competitors – blue tits and great tits. and green spaces. Parry monitored more than 30 nests What makes brownfield land a each year to find out the number of suitable home for wildlife pairs and their breeding success. The Broughton highlights that brownfield study found that a pair of willow tits land is often poorly understood, needs seven hectares, a “large” territory meaning it is not always known what for small birds. Broughton says: “They wildlife lives there. The longer a site spend their entire lives there, so it has been left undisturbed, the more needs to provide everything they need.” wildlife it tends to support. “Sites with Although the study focused on subsidence issues, which the Wigan Flashes regularly flood, are best and Amberswood insulated from future Common, the findings "BROWNFIELDS ARE development and do have can be translated OFTEN SOME OF OUR the best prospects for to other areas with LAST REMAINING long-term rewilding.” old coalfields where HAVENS FOR NATURE Each brownfield site willow tits are found. IN AN INCREASINGLY is different too, says Ben The Wigan Flashes MANAGED LANDSCAPE Kite, managing director and Amberswood - WHETHER URBAN OR at Ecological Planning Common are a mosaic THE COUNTRYSIDE“ – & Research (EPR) Ltd. of wetland, grassland, JAMIE ROBINS
