Working with partners, Nature After Minerals is here to offer and share best-practice advice on biodiversity-led minerals restoration.

All
  • All
  • Active Quarries
  • Agriculture
  • Arable
  • Coastal
  • Grassland
  • Habitat Creation on Active Quarries
  • Heathland
  • Landscape Scale
  • Open mosaic habitat
  • Restoration Report
  • Wetland
  • Woodland

Landscape scale conservation

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing push from the environmental sector for a stepwise change in how we conserve our natural environment, moving from site-specific silo-thinking to a larger-scale, multi-site, multi-partnered approach.

Island design

Islands are an important habitat feature, providing disturbance-free nesting for ducks, waders and terns. They are particularly valuable in providing both an ecological and landscape feature in large-scale waterbodies.

Green Hay: a grassland seed source

An alternative option in the creation of grassland is the use of ‘green hay’ from a local suitable donor site which can often lead to a sward with better productivity and species diversity than if sown with a commercially-bought seed.

Floodplain woodland restoration on mineral sites

Until recently, floodplain woodland restoration was often overlooked on mineral sites situated on floodplains. However, certain sites could offer excellent opportunities for creating floodplain woodland, which in turn would provide multiple benefits.

Coastal Vegetated Shingle

Opportunities to re-establish Coastal vegetated shingle are very limited. It is a rare community that is restricted to a few coastal areas where marine processes have produced stable shingle banks. These banks develop characteristic vegetation communities over a long time period.

Coastal and floodplain grazing marsh

These habitats develop on land which is periodically flooded or waterlogged by fresh or brackish water, and where agricultural management– grazing, mowing or a combination – promotes vegetation dominated by lower-growing grasses, sedges and rushes.

Artificial Otter Holt (Cassington Quarry)

Cassington Quarry original restoration plan prior to the western extension was for more open water, but due to concerns raised from the local Oxford Airport and Ministry of Defence, a new design was put forward featuring a reedbed restoration for this final stage of the extraction.

Maximising The Biodiversity Potential Of Arable Restorations

This advisory sheet will look at a number of enhancements that can be incorporated into an agricultural restoration plan, that will provide important resources for invertebrates, birds, small mammals and reptiles alike.