Biodiversity in industrial landscapes

[sallyinwales]

Had to go up to Big Pit in Blaenavon for a meeting yesterday and I had a chance to take their new nature walk round one of the old spoilheaps. I've always known that ex industrial landscapes supported a rich range of flora and fauna, but I was unprepared for just how wide a range of species, and how beautiful it all was up close.

It helped that the sun was out,there was masses of heather in bloom, coltsfoot and plantains everywhere, loads of grasses, several types of broom and a couple of bedstraws plus all the creeping vetch type things plus some fine lichens, we saw lizards, bees, dragonflies, skylarks and several types of butterfly, even a little pond full of catttails and small willows. Apparently they have a good hundred species recorded on that one tip alone. Many of them are useful species in one way or another

All this on what was bare coal spoil just a couple of decades ago. Amazing, and rather inspiring.

[Pippin]

I always like to see nature reclaiming her own, repairing the damage wrought by man

Rather like a cut scabbing over!

[xylaria]

This is something I find fascinating.

A few years ago our old banger started pouring smoke for the engine while on the M1. We stopped on the hard shoulder and I grabbed the kids and ran up the bank. The biodiversity was outstanding. At the top of the bank I looked out over a massive wheat field ,and thought why do people complain about the roads been built. Ecologically the M1 was a better habitat than the countryside beyond it.

I am really lucky in my area, we have marl pits, coal heaps, coke works, slag heaps the works, so stoke on treat now has great swathes of green space been reclaimed by Mother Nature. Nobody wants to build on it, so it never gets developed, it turns into whats called derelict. What I find interesting is that areas that run feral seem to have a broader diversity of species than the areas that are reclaimed with help from humans.

[EdS]

brown field sites often have more biodiversity that green belt. Green belt is often "green desert" of modern farm land while brownfield often is wasteland that nature has reclaimed.

Question is which is best to build on sterile farmland or a network of nature hotspots offering refuges in urban areas?

[Karr]

I agree brown fields are great, plenty of plant and animal life. I have been surveying some brown fields near me, and comparing them against "greenfeild". Brown fields are coming out on top so far. Brownfields not good for fungi though.

I spent some time with Torfaen countryside section, and we did a lot of work in Blaenavon, around Garn lakes and the area you mentioned. There is a Rapidly declining species of butterfly found on the track, known as the Small pearl-boarderd fritillary, and a number of orchids.

Regards Sparrow.