Wild Belfast and Buglife have come collectively to spotlight what they describe as an alarming lack of wildlife-rich brownfield habitat throughout Belfast. Some brownfield websites in Belfast can help uncommon and endangered wildlife, together with well-loved species akin to Purple-shanked Carder Bee (Bombus ruderarius), Widespread Lizard (Zootoca vivipara) and Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus). Nonetheless, many of those nature hotspots are in danger from being misplaced to improvement, because the charities clarify.
“The state of Belfast’s brownfields: nature below menace” 2024 report reveals that over a seven-year interval, 40% of 47 brownfield websites that Buglife had beforehand recognized as essential for wildlife in Belfast have been misplaced, broken or are in speedy menace. Concerningly, when dwell planning purposes are additionally thought of, over 60% of the overall space of this important habitat has both been misplaced or is below speedy threat- with doubtlessly profound impacts for nature within the metropolis.
Brownfields can help an enormous range of wildlife, typically offering refuges for species which have suffered inhabitants crashes because of habitat loss, akin to wildflower meadows disappearing from the panorama. They will embody quarries, disused railways strains, spoil heaps, even former industrial estates which have been allowed to grow to be city havens for wildlife. Sadly, regardless of typically being the final remaining ‘wild’ inexperienced areas in Belfast’s neighbourhoods, brownfields are continuously focused for improvement.
Conor McKinney, Chair of the Wild Belfast neighborhood group says, “Now could be a important interval for the safety of biodiversity. Our planning system affords the potential to guard and improve biodiversity- or to destroy it. Regardless of being a precedence habitat our planning system is presently failing to guard wildlife-rich brownfield websites in Belfast, or certainly throughout Northern Eire. Nature and planning authorities should seize the alternatives obtainable to them to guard these websites for nature and the communities with which they share these beneficial wild city areas”.
Buglife has beforehand recognized and measured the extent of brownfields essential for invertebrates in a 2017 report- a habitat sometimes called ‘Open mosaic habitat on beforehand developed land’. Shortly after that report, the habitat was listed as a conservation precedence in Northern Eire. Nonetheless, this new research that revisits these websites means that regardless of this dedication, these essential wildlife websites are nonetheless being misplaced, hindering the town’s nature restoration ambitions.
Jamie Robins, Programmes Supervisor of Buglife says, “Brownfields which have been reclaimed by nature have gotten more and more essential for our uncommon invertebrates as the broader countryside is degraded. We have to do extra to guard these wildlife havens. The remaining wildlife-rich brownfields ought to be protected against improvement and embraced as a key nature restoration answer, and celebrating the position they should play in giving communities a spot to attach with nature.”
The 2024 report means that Belfast’s brownfields should be higher recognised and guarded by the planning system. It additionally means that the most effective websites be integrated into the essential Web site of Native Nature Conservation Significance (SLNCI) community. As well as, the report seems to be past Belfast and recommends {that a} Northern Eire vast stock of the habitat ought to be urgently created.
