Manchester Airport’s woodland biodiversity project wins environment award

Above: Manchester Airport environmental specialist Karen Wallis with the Green Apple Award.
Courtesy MAG

In October last year the airport explained how it had teamed up TV ecologist Josh Styles to help preserve and protect woodland habitats surrounding its site.

The airport’s environment team, in conjunction with Josh Styles’ firm Styles Ecology, translocated a number of key ‘indicator species’ including bluebells, wild garlic and wood anemones, from the Cotteril Clough ancient woodland into nearby woodlands and wild spaces.

Cotteril Clough, the city of Manchester’s only Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), sits partly on the airport’s land and is closed to the public to protect its delicate ecosystem. It boasts a huge variety of rare native flora and fauna – which made it an ideal candidate for the project.

Work began last June and nine months later, the team behind the scheme are celebrating after being recognised at the Green Apple Awards in London, as the National Silver Winner in the Hospitality and Travel: Conservation and Wildlife category.

The Green Apple Awards have been running for more than three decades and recognises the best and most innovative environmental schemes on the planet, aiming to reward and promote environmental best practice. The Manchester Airport environment team was presented with the award at a ceremony in the Houses of Parliament.

The translocations will not have any impact on the ancient woodland, as the small gaps left from individually lifting the plants will naturally fill in over time, but the scheme will speed up the dispersal of these key species into woodlands in other areas of Greater Manchester and Cheshire, many of which have been degraded by human intervention and have lost the rich variety of species that they would otherwise host.
 
Martin Churley – Head of Environment & Sustainability, Manchester Airport said: "I’m incredibly proud of our environmental team for their work on this important initiative. We believe the airport has an important role to play in our neighbouring communities and that isn’t just about connecting people with the places they want to travel to – it’s about everything from creating jobs to improving infrastructure and, in this case, playing our part in creating a flourishing natural environment.

“This innovative scheme involves removing a small number of plants from key species and replanting them in other woodlands. It doesn’t have any lasting effect on the ancient woodland at Cotteril Clough, where populations of those species will continue to thrive – but it enables the spread of these species in other pockets of woodland that have become degraded by human activity, and in time it will restore their ecosystems to their natural state.”