Biodiversity wins at MPA event
We are the proud winners of the Biodiversity Innovation award at this year’s MPA Restoration & Biodiversity Awards for our Floodplain Forest Nature Reserve near Milton Keynes.
This restoration scheme at our Manor Park quarry has involved creating lakes, ponds, wet woodland, swamp, marsh, fen and reed beds. The project, undertaken in partnership with The Parks Trust, Milton Keynes, has transformed the landscape into a network of habitats which link with the main river, the Great Ouse. The habitats are an integral and active part of the floodplain, benefitting a wide range of wildlife, enhancing the landscape and flood and water management.
Our ‘In at the Start’ community engagement project with High Batts Nature Reserve at our Ripon quarry in North Yorkshire was also the runner-up in the category and highly commended. Our entry to restore quarry benches at Batts Combe quarry in Somerset – celebrating 40 years of trials and techniques – was also commended.
The awards, held at The Royal Society in London, were part of the MPA’s Quarries & Nature 2019 event, which celebrates the mineral products industry’s contribution to restoration and biodiversity.
“By creating new habitats during quarry restoration, mineral products companies are uniquely placed to increase biodiversity and this year’s submissions and winners of our prestigious awards once again enrich and extend the legacy the industry has built over the decades,” said MPA chief executive Nigel Jackson.
Martin Crow, former national sustainability manager at Hanson UK, who retired earlier this year, also received an MPA special award.
Other Hanson project award winners were:
- Horcott Quarry, Fairford, Gloucestershire – COMMENDED, Cooper-Heyman Cup for outstanding restoration
- West Knighton Quarry Complex, Dorchester, Dorset – COMMENDED, Cooper-Heyman Cup for outstanding restoration
- Newington - Misson Quarry, Misson, Nottinghamshire – COMMENDED, Planned Restoration