Encouraging biodiversity
Managing our land
Over the past few years, we have adopted a new way of managing land to encourage biodiversity.
Some people love it, others hate it, but the fact is, the old-fashioned way of keeping grass super-short across the board is a thing of the past, as organisations like ours do what we can to help wildlife.
What we are going to do
We have assessed our land and looked at how it is used by the community. As a result, we are
dividing land into three broad categories:
- Grassed areas that are enjoyed by the community for recreation or socialising, or that can potentially restrict visibility if left uncut, will be cut regularly from April to September.
- Other areas will be partly maintained with border cuts and made accessible with walkways, but with parts still being left for nature.
- With guidance from local ecologists, several areas have been identified as prime spots and will be turned into wildflower meadows.
Thinking differently about wildflowers
When you think of wildflowers, brightly coloured flowers spring to mind. However, the traditional wildflower mix you can pick up in lots of shops tend to be ‘non-native’ so that means the seeds originate abroad, therefore our native bugs, bees and other pollinators tend not to like them, no matter how pretty they look!
By letting nature do its thing, everything that pops up is native. However, doing this way takes longer so it won’t look neat straight away.
We’ve already been doing this for a couple of years, so in some areas we are starting to see lots of beautiful flowers, long grass, and trees. We expect to see even more year-on-year, but it can take up to five years for native wildflower meadows to really take hold.
Why do we care?
- We are living in a climate and biodiversity emergency and as an organisation we want to do all we can to protect the planet. That’s why we have a Sustainable Planet strategy.
- Our wildlife is decreasing, and biodiversity is declining globally at rapid rates.
- 1 in 6 species assessed in Wales are at risk of extinction. Over 130 species have already been lost in the last 500 years.
- We have seen a 97% decrease in natural meadows including grassed areas.
- Welsh Government is encouraging all of us to let it grow, and reduced grass cutting on our land is creating a better habitat for bees, butterflies, invertebrates, birds, small mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
- With many hectares of land throughout Neath Port Talbot, changing our approach will make a big difference.
