2022 was another busy year for our Heathrow Biodiversity team members. Being a small team managing 13 biodiversity sites means there is always lots to do! We welcomed a new face to the team in May, with Dave joining us as a Biodiversity Conservation Officer to replace Charlie.
We were also joined in the summer by Lauren, a degree student spending some time with us to gain first-hand experience in conservation.
We are proud of Heathrow’s Biodiversity Benchmark Award record, and once again in 2022 we undertook the audit by The Wildlife Trusts to try and achieve this award for a 14th year in row.
A crucial element of our biodiversity site management is the control of INNS (Invasive Non-Native Species), and 2022 was no exception. A major Orange and Himalayan Balsam removal effort took place along a 2-mile stretch of the Longford and Duke of Northumberland’s rivers (collectively known as the Twin Diverted Rivers).
With much of this stretch protected by anti-bird netting, the only way to remove much of the balsam is to don waders and attack it from the water. With temperatures last summer often hitting the mid-30s however, wading through cool water became a much more appealing prospect!
Grazing is a valuable conservation tool for habitat management, allowing vegetation to be controlled where mowers or hand tools would be difficult or impossible to use, and naturally creating a landscape of differing vegetation heights and density, which encourages biodiversity.
For this reason, we released a herd of 8 Belted Galloway cows at Princes Lakes, where much of the terrain is uneven and/or difficult to access for humans, but not for the cows – a few weeks of roaming and munching their way around the site greatly improved the landscape!
There was much activity centred around our beehives this year. Firstly, the decision was made to transition the hives from the old plastic type to wooden cedar hives. This provides the bees with a more natural environment and therefore means they are more likely to stay in the hive; it also allows for easier hive expandability in the future. Our wooden hives were assembled from kits, and the bees transferred to their new homes by a process known as shook-swarming, which is not as violent as it sounds!
There was more good bee news later in the year. Firstly, our Princes Lakes apiary was designated as an Enhanced Sentinel Apiary by the National Bee Unit of APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency). This means that the hives will be regularly inspected by a Regional Bee Inspector for the presence of pests such as Hive beetle, a non-native species which can enter the country in cargo. Our proximity to Heathrow therefore makes us vulnerable to this pest, and having enhanced sentinel status means we will have better protection from these pests and better overall hive health. Secondly, we enjoyed another bumper honey harvest this year, extracting over 31 litres of honey from our 7 hives! We always make sure that there is plenty left on the hives for the bees to see them through the winter months.
Another of our responsibilities is managing bee swarms. Swarms occur as a natural part of bee colony reproduction. The swarm will contain the old queen leaving a new queen behind to start her new colony. When swarms occur airside, they are a major problem which could cause huge delays and must be removed. During 2022 we removed 4 swarms from airside at Heathrow. The swarms are either handed over to a local beekeeper or rehoused in one of our own apiaries.
Some of Heathrow’s biodiversity sites are also operational sites integral to the airport’s water treatment system, so some of our habitat management work is governed by the needs of the Heathrow Engineering and Environmental team. An example of this is a major tree and vegetation clearing project carried out at our Mayfield Farm water treatment site. This was necessary to clear a feeder channel for a second treatment site further down the chain, which had become partially blocked by the vegetation. The biodiversity team is always ready to carry out small or large-scale projects like this in response to the operational needs of the airport, but in all cases a biodiversity impact assessment is carried out first.
