An Unrivalled Opportunity

Enhanced biodiversity on minerals sites restored for nature

In this article, Nature After Minerals (NAM) – a partnership between the RSPB and Natural England, with support from the minerals industry – looks at the multiple benefits of minerals sites restored to nature conservation and celebrates the achievements of the industry.

Potential for nature

Minerals sites represent a huge opportunity for nature conservation and a natural environment that is rich in biodiversity, through the creation of new, high-quality, priority habitat. With the restoration of sites, the industry has an unrivalled opportunity to recreate and reconnect wildlife-rich spaces in the wider landscape.

In 2006, the RSPB conducted a survey of active minerals sites in England to assess how such sites might be able to support UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) priority habitat. The findings of this survey were presented in the report ‘Nature After Minerals: how mineral site restoration can benefit people and wildlife’ (A.M. Davies, November 2006)1, and established that mineral sites could meet nine out of 11 priority UK BAP habitats (see table below). This finding was keenly noted in and around the minerals industry, and since then the industry has built on existing achievements and continues aiming to turn this potential into reality, with wildlife and local communities as the key beneficiaries.

The minerals industry’s response

Over the years, the minerals industry has become ever more aware of this potential and the important role its sites can play in biodiversity and sustainability. At a joint Mineral Products Association/RSPB reception at the House of Commons in January this year, Nigel Jackson, MPA chief executive, acknowledged that the minerals industry is ‘...uniquely placed, equipped, organized and motivated to help the UK achieve its BAP targets on habitat creation. We can do something industries which get far more government attention, such as retail, automotives, pharmaceuticals and energy, cannot do...’

As examples of how the industry has embraced the biodiversity agenda, Aggregate Industries are working very closely with the local community at Little Paxton, in Cambridgeshire, to shape the creation of a major wetland there, and in September 2010 CEMEX UK launched their Biodiversity Strategy: Building Biodiversity – The CEMEX UK biodiversity strategy 2010–2020, produced in partnership with the RSPB, where they spelt out their intention to create and maintain a total of 1,000ha of UK BAP priority habitats by 2020. The Mineral Products Association also launched its own Biodiversity Strategy: ‘Building on our legacy...realising our potential, the MPA Biodiversity Strategy’, in January 2011, and this year has introduced a new Biodiversity Awards Scheme (in addition to the industry restoration awards scheme which it has run for the last 40 years). Other operators and stakeholders are equally ambitious.

Nature After Minerals

As a partnership between the RSPB and Natural England, Nature After Minerals looks at the strategic opportunities for delivering biodiversity through high-quality habitat creation. The programme provides site-specific advice, works with local authorities through policies and plans, and promotes core messages to a range of influential stakeholders. The programme also functions with the valuable support of the Mineral Products Association (MPA) and the British Aggregates Association (BAA). NAM welcomes the opportunity to work alongside industry, planners, regulators and the conservation community, drawing upon each other’s expertise. By encouraging genuine partnership working, NAM believes it is possible to achieve high-quality restorations.

Habitat creation advice

Last year, the Nature After Minerals programme delivered advice on more than 2,000ha of land across the country, with the provision of tailored, site-specific habitat creation recommendations to operators. This was achieved via face-to-face site visits and the holding of specialized workshops on habitat design, creation and management.

One of the programme’s key aims is to publicise the excellent work being undertaken by the industry on the Nature After Minerals website (www.afterminerals.com). This is an up-to-date resource for mineral site restoration. The website features new and updated case studies of exemplary BAP restorations across England. It focuses on the factors that were central to their creation and the mechanisms that helped to make them work. In addition, the website’s mapping tool allows users to search for, and view, any existent mineral permission in England, along with preferred areas where they are known. A site’s location may also be viewed in relation to the surrounding BAP habitats and designated protected sites.

Importantly, the mapping tool demonstrates which BAP habitats could be created on any given site. When working with operators on particular sites, NAM looks first at the relevant BAP and the site’s proximity to priority habitats and designations, taking into account any constraints on the site and its potential to connect to the wider landscape. NAM also encourages an understanding that the larger the area of habitat, the more it can deliver for biodiversity. This has not always been well implemented in the past, with many sites trying to create as many habitats as possible in a relatively small area.

Some success stories

At Farnham Quarry, in Surrey, Hanson have been actively engaging with a number of conservation partners to help develop the best restoration possible, given the site’s constraints. In conjunction with Surrey County Council, Surrey Wildlife Trust and the Blackwater Valley Partnership, NAM has provided input to the restoration scheme and earthworks plans, which will be implemented later this summer.

On the western edge of Poole Harbour, Imerys Minerals are restoring Arne ball clay works to a saline lagoon, surrounded by heath and oak woodland. Material on site is being re-profiled to create a small island and to maximize the area of shallow water available. A breach will be made into the harbour this summer to allow the site to start filling through tidal exchange. This is the only restoration of its kind currently under way in the country and it is hoped the site will become home to nesting terns as well as saline lagoon specialists, such as the starlet sea anemone and lagoon sea slug. It also increases the potential for new species of bird to breed in Poole Harbour, including spoonbill and avocet.

Landscape scale

Extending to over 230ha, the Puddletown Road network of sand and gravel sites in south Dorset is an example of habitat restoration at a landscape scale. The sites are being progressively worked and restored to lowland heath which will reconnect and buffer the surrounding internationally designated heathland. These heaths support a number of rare plants and animals including all six of the UK’s species of reptile. The Puddletown Road is within the RSPB’s Purbeck Futurescape (a landscape-scale initiative for conservation) and is an example of how it is possible to create a resilient and more coherent ecological network, as advocated in the Lawton Review, ‘Making Space For Nature.’2

Benefits beyond biodiversity

Some of the country’s rarest species of birds, mammals, reptiles, butterflies and plants have found refuge on former quarries and are thriving. It is clear that restored quarries can, and are, making a significant contribution to the biological diversity of living organisms in the natural environment. They can also deliver benefits beyond biodiversity and are increasingly important to local communities. How nature improves human well-being and provides economic goods is becoming an increasingly useful way of demonstrating the wider, less-tangible value of biodiversity and habitat restoration; whether by reducing flood risk through provision of flood storage capacity or by providing health benefits for communities through access to nature and space for recreation. Such critical considerations have been addressed in the recently released findings of the UK National Ecosystems Assessment (NEA), commissioned by Defra and available for download from: http://archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/natural/documents/ UKNEA_SynthesisReport.pdf

Mineral Development Frameworks

With regard to NAM’s engagement with the planning system, the new generation of minerals plans represents a real opportunity to develop clear, positive policies to help guide the creation of great places for wildlife on restored minerals sites. NAM seeks to influence the development of emerging Minerals Development Framework (MDF) documents at key local mineral planning authorities across England, to maximize the contribution to the UK BAP habitat expansion targets.

In 2010, David Tyldesley Associates (DTA) were commissioned by Nature After Minerals to review the relevant policies from adopted or submission draft MDFs in England. The review3 also highlighted best practice. Encouragingly, the review found very few explicit barriers to the delivery of BAP habitat targets within restoration policies; the plans generally presented a positive framework for benefitting nature. The stronger plans – those showing best practice – included aspirational and focused policy frameworks recognizing and seeking to realize the opportunities presented by minerals site restorations. NAM has published an advisory sheet for planners based on the DTA report, which will soon be available on its www.afterminerals.com website. Key recommendations include:

• The promotion of a landscape-scale approach to increase connectivity of existing and new wildlife habitats within the landscape.
• Using the presence of adjacent habitats and designated sites to inform restoration proposals.
• Encouraging larger blocks of a smaller range of habitats rather than an over-complex mosaic. These tend to perform better ecologically and are often simpler to manage in the long term than an over-complex mosaic of many different habitats.
• Prioritize the rarer opportunities. Physical and hydrological conditions may mean opportunities to create some habitats (eg heathland) will be rare compared to others (eg broadleaf woodland).
• Promote early consideration and integration of biodiversity gains.
• Seek extended after-care periods to secure successful habitat restoration.

Stakeholder engagement

As part of an extensive events and workshops programme over the last year, NAM recently held an event at CEMEX’s headquarters in Thorpe, Surrey. Through this event, NAM brought together local authority and operator planners, NGOs and statutory agencies to discuss emerging issues and themes affecting planning for BAP habitat delivery on minerals sites. Speakers included representatives from the Mineral Products Association, the Environment Agency, Surrey County Council and the RSPB. The talks covered how to plan for biodiversity within restoration plans and within Mineral Development Frameworks, including an overview of emerging MDF policies. They also covered some of the policy affecting planners, such as the Water Framework Directive, and emerging issues for planners, such as ‘localism’. The content of the talks and the discussion which followed highlighted how different stakeholders and sectors around the minerals industry are thinking about the same themes. Such discussion can aid understanding and lead to further partnership working, which can be a beneficial aid to biodiversity delivery on minerals sites.

Partnership working – working for biodiversity

In summary, there is immense potential for enhanced biodiversity on minerals sites through restoration to UK BAP habitat. Nature After Minerals would advocate a continuation in partnership working and the sharing of best practice as the most effective way of ensuring delivery and achieving success for wildlife and people, in such places.

For further information on the Nature After Minerals programme, contact: Charlie Butt, NAM programme manager, on tel: (01767) 693316.

References

1. Available for download from www.afterminerals.com
2. Lawton, J.H., Brotherton, P.N.M., Brown, V.K., Elphick, C., Fitter, A.H., Forshaw, J., Haddow, R.W., Hilborne, S., Leafe, R.N., Mace, G.M., Southgate, M.P., Sutherland, W.A., Tew, T.E., Varley, J., and G.R. Wynne: ‘Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological network,’ Report to Defra, 2010.
3. Bradford, G., and R. Deeming: ‘Nature After Minerals – Review of Minerals Development Frameworks in respect to delivery of BAP Targets through MDF Policy,’ David Tyldesley and Associates, 2010.