Corridors of power
Granting wildlife the habitat to optimise their biological niche is an issue looming larger in the strategies of sports, leisure and amenity operators and managers.
Multidisciplinary working can realise current thinking on species extinction, an issue set to enter the election battleground, most notably among the young.
Wildlife trusts across Britain, partnering local authorities and government agencies, are active in helping improve existing habitats to foster greater biodiversity and fashion new ones.
“Sports facilities can do so much to help nature recover and tackle climate change if they’re managed sympathetically,” says Barnaby Coupe, land use policy manager at The Wildlife Trusts.
“Avoiding pesticides and weedkiller is a great way to start – these chemicals can be dangerous to insects and polluting to local streams and rivers,” he cautions.
“Additionally, managing habitats around the edges and interlinking areas of golf courses and sportspitches with nature in mind can make a huge difference for wild plants and animals.”
“Let the grass grow long across large swathes,” he advises, “and only cut it once in late summer, taking care to rake up and compost all the cuttings. Doing this will reduce fertility and allow wildflowers to grow, which is crucially important to provide food and shelter for threatened insects.”
“We’re in a nature and climate crisis,” Barnaby continues, “and changing the way we manage land to be more sustainable can play an important and beneficial role in helping pollinators and animal populations recover.”
“It also makes for more beautiful surroundings. Large numbers of sports facilities have vistas of oxe-eye daisies, wild orchids and buttercups at this time of year.”
Referring to the worrying trend of increasingly wet weather and intensity of precipitation, he notes: “Natural habitats are also better at storing water, which have longer vegetation and better soil structure to soak up water in times of high rainfall.”
“This is especially important as we see the challenges of extreme weather events increase with climate change,” concluding: “The benefits of managing land to improve nature are multiple – give it a try!”
Rivers are ready-made wildlife corridors, under threat on at least two fronts – pollution from wholesale sewage discharge and shifting patterns of heavier rainfall, one reportedly the effect of the other. Wildlife trusts have notable examples of success to report in turning the tide by working to let land hold more water to lower flood risk.
In South Yorkshire, natural flood management measures in the Limb Brook Catchment help protect Sheffield and the region, while generating fresh wildlife habitats.
Popular Whirlow Playing Fields provides floodwater storage following a nature-based solutions (NBS) demonstrator project, which united the Environment Agency, Sheffield City Council and Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust.
Under the Upper Don Source to Sea programme, the works help store water and slow movement to limit chances of flooding in at-risk sites downstream in the river Don.
Facilities like Whirlow Fields usually would be drained artificially, the Trust explains, with rapid run-off of water channelled to nearby watercourses - here the Limb Brook, a tributary of the Sheaf, in turn a tributary of the Don. Heavy rainfall can add to existing high flows, causing flooding downstream.
Proposals for new pitches now require measures to dampen flow. This project sought to do this retrospectively by accessing drainage systems and bringing the flow to the surface as streams - directing it into six attenuation ponds to hold and slowly release excess water - and swales, shallow, grassy channels slowing and directing flow.
Rainwater moves more slowly once it hits the ground, as it flows through long vegetation and snakes around channel bends - ponds temporarily holding off water during storms.
“Bringing water to the surface and out of pipes can create a new dynamic and biodiverse landscape,” the trust says. “These features and wildflower meadow and hedge planting support wildlife including birds, insects and amphibians, as well as creating resilience to climate and ecological emergencies.”
Sheffield Hallam University undertook engineering design of the flood storage reservoirs and attenuation ponds, also assisting with ecological and landscape history assessments.
Water movement changes were monitored onsite via a large citizen science component involving the local community, and in the river with hydrology equipment.
“Even in its early stages, with not all ponds in place and some bare areas where vegetation had not yet fully colonised, the scheme was working,” the trust reports. “Water flows through the swales constantly; and during recent extreme rainfall, the ponds held a significant amount, slowly releasing it into the swale systems, which directed the flow into the bund at the bottom of the fields where it dissipated into the woodland.”
© Daniel Greenwood
“The work on Whirlow Fields allows us to capture more water during extremes while holding some water for wildlife makes the site, and city, more resilient against flooding, and resilient for wildlife.”
The pond control design lets managers decide if they want to capture water for a common flood event like annual heavy rainfall, or a severe one, which may only happen every 30 years – “a clever way to future-proof Rotherham, Sheffield and other communities downstream, while providing a wildlife-rich landscape for everyone to enjoy.”
Delivering varied interventions along the whole of a watercourse and slowing flow provided a chain of water-dependent habitats to improve biodiversity, said Anthony Downing, Environment Agency Catchment Coordinator, Environment Programme, speaking when works were completed.
“Knowledge we gain from the project will inform how the Source to Sea programme will deliver nature-based solutions across the River Don catchment.”
A World Heritage Site is mooted for the wildlife reserve on the West Kent Golf Club estate, near Orpington, signalling the importance of this habitat. A stone’s throw from Down House, where Charles Darwin developed his seminal work on the Origin of Species, the WHS would be aptly coined – Darwin’s Landscape Laboratory.
Managed by London Wildlife Trust since 1987, under an agreement with the golf club to conserve and enhance its value for wildlife, the Eastern bank sits in rare chalk grassland, scrub and woodland, and numbers some 28 species of butterfly, which the unusual mix of wildflowers attracts, the Trust explains. “His writings suggest the reserve helped inspire Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection,” adding, “Rotational meadow cuts and selective burning help control invasive grasses and sustain high species diversity.”
At least three other reserves rest within six miles of West Kent, offering opportunities of connectivity across all four sites, perhaps.
The Avenue Country Park
With Chesterfield’s crooked spire as a backdrop, the former Avenue heavy industrial coking plant was restored to provide the space for both wildlife and people. Re-meandering of the River Rother created a country park mixing grassland, wetland and newly planted woodland habitats.
Five years later, the site has matured and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, land managers since 2019, reports a welter of bird species populating the park. Visitors regularly spot kingfishers and lapwings in the wetlands, while flocks of goldfinch feed in the large meadow areas, it adds. The wet, lush green environment also attracts great crested newts and grass snakes. Large multi-user paths suit running, cycling and horse-riding and sportspitches serve local teams.
Data gains
Technology will increasingly steer a path to more ecologically inclusive habitats, but joining the dots between differing data sets and systems holds the key to viewing and assessing currently sustainable regions by crucially pointing the way to strategically planning wildlife corridors, particularly in the built realm.
The HUGSI.green (Husqvarna Urban Green Space Index) initiative, run by the power tools and turf machinery manufacturer, holds the promise of helping realise such a future, linking data on the percentage of green cover in more than 200 cities in Europe and worldwide, to street level snapshots of urban green space and development.
League tables of greenest cities emerge and, importantly, shifting patterns and percentages of canopy cover witnessed over time to also provide a nature positive/nature negative index.
Seen in aerial view, planners, architects, designers and facility operators can see how what they do fits into the wider environment. What are now isolated pockets of green could link up to create corridors to foster greater mobility for wildlife.
Enterprising schemes such as the Weald to Waves initiative, stretching from Surrey to the South Coast, show what’s possible with joined-up thinking and how sports sites can play a critical role in wider action to make land wildlife friendly.
A great deal of next-level thinking is going into developing an integrated strategy to connect the many pockets of nature-healthy habitats spread across the UK. Challenging but creative times ahead for planners and practitioners.