project led by Manchester Airport that seeks to preserve woodland habitats around the city has been given a prestigious Green Apple Award.
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 glittering 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.
