Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 11
REBOOTING CONSERVATION IN THE URBAN BADLANDS
Peter Shaw clambered over a huge pile of ash outside one of Britain's larger power stations. He trod
carefully to avoid the profusion of orchids, tested the thin smear of soil for signs of the first earthworms,
and lifted an abandoned sheet of metal to uncover a grass snake and a slowworm. Shaw was explor-
ing one of hundreds of forgotten biological treasures in Britain's industrial badlands. They are, he says,
the extreme case of our new novel ecosystems and ecological resources of increasing importance in our
crowded landscapes. “Planners dismiss waste tips, old industrial sites and similar places as ripe for re-
development, but they often support more scarce wild species than farmed land,” says Shaw. “They have
one in six of the UK's rare insects, for instance.” Nature persists, even flourishes, in the most unlikely,
most damaged, and apparently least natural environments. We should value them as much as any rain
forest, says Shaw, a soil biologist at the University of Roehampton in London.
The nation that gave birth to the industrial revolution is now the home of a remarkable wildlife re-
vival on derelict land. Nature is taking over ash heaps, old chemical factories, former oil refineries, rail-
way sidings, and metal mines. Rare native species and novel exotics alike find in such places bizarre
human-made habitats that do not exist elsewhere. Yet few conservationists have caught up. They rarely
protest when these industrial hot spots of biodiversity are built over. Instead, they call for such places to
be developed in order to keep the bulldozers out of greenfields—greenfields that are often biologically
sterile. Most field guides to British wildlife never mention these badlands. This casual indifference to
nature away from where we expect to find it is perverse.
Industrialization began in Britain, and the country has also led the way in dismantling old industries
in the past thirty years or so. New human-constructed oases for nature have proliferated. But other na-
tions are catching up, and the Rust Belt of the United States will be at least as rich in wildlife—for any-
one keen to blaze postindustrial nature trails. So far, however, American ecologists have paid even less
attention to the potential than their counterparts in Britain.
Shaw and I were standing on a heap of pulverized fuel ash at Tilbury, on the estuary of the River
Thames east of London. Shaw had been checking nature's progress on a series of observation plots he
has returned to regularly for more than twenty years. This time he found the small yellow flowers of
birdsfoot trefoil were doing well. The plant likes the alkalinity, the infertility, and the high levels of the
metal molybdenum in the ash. They help it fix nitrogen from the air and eventually to create soil. Shaw
also logged sea buckthorn, yellow-wort, melilot, and mouse-ear hawkweed before checking out what
looked like cannabis but turned out to be American willow herb. The place is a treasure trove. Orchid
lovers have found dozens of hybrids here. Entomologists counted 656 different invertebrate species, in-
cluding a dung beetle thought extinct since the 1920s. Bees are busy. “But no earthworms yet; it's still
too alkaline,” said Shaw.
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