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 equivalent to Crimson-shanked Carder Bee (Bombus ruderarius), Frequent Lizard (Zootoca vivipara) and Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus). Nonetheless, many of those nature hotspots are in danger from being misplaced to growth, because the charities clarify.
“The state of Belfast’s brownfields: nature beneath risk” 2024 report reveals that over a seven-year interval, 40% of 47 brownfield websites that Buglife had beforehand recognized as vital for wildlife in Belfast have been misplaced, broken or are in quick risk. Concerningly, when dwell planning functions are additionally thought-about, over 60% of the overall space of this important habitat has both been misplaced or is beneath quick threat- with probably profound impacts for nature within the metropolis.
Brownfields can help an enormous variety of wildlife, typically offering refuges for species which have suffered inhabitants crashes because of habitat loss, equivalent to wildflower meadows disappearing from the panorama. They will embody quarries, disused railways strains, spoil heaps, even former industrial estates which were allowed to turn into city havens for wildlife. Sadly, regardless of typically being the final remaining ‘wild’ inexperienced areas in Belfast’s neighbourhoods, brownfields are regularly focused for growth.
Conor McKinney, Chair of the Wild Belfast group group says, “Now’s a vital interval for the safety of biodiversity. Our planning system gives the potential to guard and improve biodiversity- or to destroy it. Regardless of being a precedence habitat our planning system is at the moment 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 invaluable wild city areas”.
Buglife has beforehand recognized and measured the extent of brownfields vital 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 vital wildlife websites are nonetheless being misplaced, hindering town’s nature restoration ambitions.
Jamie Robins, Programmes Supervisor of Buglife says, “Brownfields which have been reclaimed by nature have gotten more and more vital 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 shielded from growth and embraced as a key nature restoration answer, and celebrating the function they must play in giving communities a spot to attach with nature.”
The 2024 report means that Belfast’s brownfields must be higher recognised and guarded by the planning system. It additionally means that one of the best websites be integrated into the vital Website of Native Nature Conservation Significance (SLNCI) community. As well as, the report seems past Belfast and recommends {that a} Northern Eire broad stock of the habitat ought to be urgently created.
