{"id":199,"date":"2012-06-25T13:24:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T17:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=199"},"modified":"2018-08-23T10:24:38","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T14:24:38","slug":"colonisation-and-creativity-two-of-the-drivers-in-urban-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2012\/06\/25\/colonisation-and-creativity-two-of-the-drivers-in-urban-ecology\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonisation and Creativity: Two of the Drivers in Urban Ecology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past two weeks I have experienced two very different aspects of urban ecology.\u00a0 The first centered on a pair of peregrine falcons nesting close to where I live in the city of Bath.\u00a0 The second was a visit to the Olympic Parklands which have been created for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. \u00a0They illustrate well the range of issues and opportunities involved with nature in the city.<\/p>\n

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Peregrine falcon with pigeon on St John\u2019s Church in Bath UK. Photo by David Goode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are all familiar with the way that some species are particularly good at colonising urban areas.\u00a0 In the UK some groups of birds have been particularly successful, notably those of the crow family and a wide range of water birds, including a number of alien species.\u00a0 But the colonisation of towns and cities by peregrine falcons has been one of the most dramatic changes of recent years.\u00a0 Until the 1990s traditional nest sites of peregrines in Britain were restricted to mountain crags and sea cliffs.\u00a0 But as the population recovered from the low levels brought about by chemical pesticides in the 1960s some birds started to use quarries and artificial structures.\u00a0 The recent colonisation of urban areas has been spectacular.\u00a0 I remember the excitement amongst local birders when a pair first took up residence on Battersea Power Station in London in 2000.\u00a0 This was followed by enormous public interest when people were able to watch the birds through telescopes in central London when they became an established feature on the Tate Modern Art Gallery.\u00a0 Many thousands of people have enjoyed seeing the birds at first hand.\u00a0 My local pair in Bath is no exception.\u00a0 I regularly take my telescope for people to see the birds which nest on a city centre church.\u00a0 The standard reaction from almost everyone when they first see the bird is \u201cOh Wow!\u201d\u00a0 This year they were given live national coverage by the BBC in it\u2019s Springwatch <\/em>programme.<\/p>\n

The pace of this recent colonisation has been extraordinarily rapid.\u00a0 From a few scattered pairs in the late 1990s we now have a situation where many major cities have at least one pair.\u00a0 London now has over twenty pairs.\u00a0 Young birds raised in urban areas will find breeding sites in similar places and there are plenty to choose from.\u00a0 But for me the most significant feature of the colonisation of towns and cities is the discovery that these birds are gaining an advantage by hunting at night.\u00a0 Examination of prey remains by Ed Drewitt of Bristol Museum has shown that whilst feral pigeons form about half their diet, the other half is made up of a wide range of species, many of which are not local birds.\u00a0 In Bath their prey in winter months includes large numbers of woodcock which are thought to be migrants flying though the city.\u00a0 By using the lights of the city the peregrines are adapting very effectively to an urbanised lifestyle.\u00a0 But not everything is plain sailing.\u00a0 The urban environment poses a variety of hazards for young birds when they take their first flight and I have witnessed numerous mishaps.\u00a0 But they also have the advantage of being watched over by many people during the critical period and the proportion of young birds that have been rescued is remarkably high. Local members of the Hawk and Owl Trust have been kept busy. One young bird had to be fished out of the river twice last week!<\/p>\n

Once the peregrine nesting season had finished I went to see the venue for the London Olympics.\u00a0 You may think that the Olympic Games is all about sporting events and has little to do with nature.\u00a0 But the reality is very different.\u00a0 London set out to put sustainability at the heart of the 2012 Games and this meant that biodiversity had to be addressed as part of the overall plan.\u00a0 Construction of the Olympic Parklands with its various sports arenas and Athletes Village includes a range of newly created naturalistic habitats designed to<\/p>\n

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River valley wetlands created alongside the River Lea with the Olympic Stadium and Aquatic Centre behind. Photo by David Goode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

enhance the wildlife of the Lea Valley in which the venue is situated.\u00a0 After the Games are over the area will become the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park which has been designed to provide high quality green infrastructure alongside a mixture of residential, sporting and commercial development.\u00a0 The legacy of the Olympics will be to revitalise an area of London which had suffered severe post-industrial blight and create a new high-quality environment incorporating sustainable drainage schemes, green roofs, and forty-five hectares of new ecological landscapes as part of a much wider area of newly accessible green space.<\/p>\n

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The London Olympics Velodrome with herb-rich grassland in foreground. Photo David Goode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Looking round the park last week I was impressed by the transformation that has been achieved.\u00a0 Although there are six major sporting venues in the park, including the Olympic Stadium, Velodrome, Aquatic Centre, also Hockey and Basketball pitches there was a sense of space, with river channels and wetlands, as well as more formal areas representing the gardens of the world.\u00a0 But what I particularly liked was the effort that had been made to incorporate nearly 700 bird boxes and bat boxes into all the built structures.\u00a0 So gabions of the bridges had large numbers of bird boxes built in to accommodate species such as swift, house sparrow, starling and one of the local rarities the black redstart.\u00a0 Elsewhere there are artificial banks for kingfishers, and sand martins.\u00a0 Needless to say the martins were using holes intended for kingfishers. There are also artificial holts for otters.\u00a0 Reed warblers and reed buntings were singing from the newly created reedbeds and large numbers of native black poplar have been planted to create wet woodlands.\u00a0 The process involved clearance of extensive areas of invasive plants including giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed.<\/p>\n

Both land and water were heavily polluted.\u00a0 The Velodrome is built on what was locally known as \u201cfridge-mountain\u201d.\u00a0 The whole area of the park has been restored to create high-quality habitats.\u00a0 Ecological features of post-industrial landscapes have been retained by creation of stone and rubble banks supporting vegetation characteristic of urban wastelands.\u00a0 It is hoped that these will provide suitable habitat for locally endangered invertebrate species, such as the brown-banded carder bee and toadflax brocade moth.\u00a0 This is all far removed from one\u2019s normal perception of Olympic Games!<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get to see the Athlete\u2019s Village, there was too much security, but I\u2019m told that the buildings all have green roofs and there are further areas of species-rich grassland with a large lake for flood alleviation, all of which will be maintained when the athlete\u2019s accommodation becomes a residential area.\u00a0 Biodiversity is only one element of the overall design for sustainability.\u00a0 The carbon footprint of the Games has been mapped in great detail and the pursuit of sustainability has affected the design of every aspect of the park and the staging of the games.\u00a0 There is much talk of designing new urban areas to improve their environmental performance, especially in the context of climate change, but also to improve the quality of urban life for their residents.<\/p>\n

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park provides a microcosm of what is possible.<\/p>\n

But it can only happen if sustainability is central to design and if there is the political will to make it happen.\u00a0 The Olympic Park could provide a new model for urban development.\u00a0 Its legacy will not only be in the new landscapes and buildings that have been created, but also in what everyone involved has learnt from doing it.\u00a0 The culture change in addressing sustainability in such detail has been immense.\u00a0 It has affected everyone from architects and civil engineers to all those involved in the vast supply chain of materials and in the actual staging of the Games.\u00a0 It has been a unique opportunity to develop solutions that can now be applied more widely.\u00a0 London 2012 has been dubbed the One Planet Olympics.\u00a0 The benefits will go far beyond London.<\/p>\n

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Newly created wetland habitats and Athletes Village for the 2012 Olympics. Photo by David Goode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past two weeks I have experienced two very different aspects of urban ecology.\u00a0 The first centered on a pair of peregrine falcons nesting close to where I live in the city of Bath.\u00a0 The second was a visit to the Olympic Parklands which have been created for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":7052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,938,297],"tags":[401,88,100],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-europe","category-essay-science-and-tools","tag-biodiversity","tag-planning","tag-wildlife-people-interactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}