Habitat Creation and Restoration

Penny Anderson Associates Ltd. (PAA) has extensive experience of habitat creation, restoration and translocation, an area of ecology that is one of the consultancy’s particular specialisms. PAA was responsible for one of the largest habitat creation schemes in the country at Stansted Airport, where 31 hectares of wildflower grassland and 64 hectares of hedge, copse and woodland were established. We were awarded one of the CBI’s premier awards for the Business Commitment to the Environment Scheme in 1991 and monitoring and evaluation of these habitats at Stansted continues to this day.

Our Expertise
Our nationally-recognised expertise in this area has led to many publications, training courses, demonstrations of best practice schemes, and academic presentations. Several PAA consultant ecologists hold PhDs in habitat creation and restoration and have published in leading academic journals and presented at international conferences including the British Ecological Society (BES) and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER).

PAA is particularly well known for its expertise in upland habitat restoration and creation. Over the years British peatlands have been adversely impacted by industrial pollution, wildfires, visitor number pressures and poor land management practices. PAA has made significant contributions to improving our understanding of peatland habitats and through research and on-the-ground involvement in restoration projects, helped in the development of best practice remediation methods. Working in peatlands requires a wide range of specialist disciplines and skills that our in-house staff can provide in, for example, botany, peat hydrology, GIS, vegetation and water monitoring design, soil science and the earth sciences.

The range of work that we cover at PAA includes:

• Reinstatement of damaged land around installations, e.g. calcareous grassland around a communications installation on the Sussex Downs;
• Mitigation measures, including habitat translocation, e.g. the creation of new flower-rich grasslands, scrub, hedges, woodlands and ponds in an award-winning scheme at Stansted Airport;
• Project enhancement to give distinction to a development scheme, e.g. the enhancement of roadside banks by introducing suitable wildflowers and management along the A55 in North Wales;
• Repair of eroded ground from fire damage, over-grazing, over-use or disturbance, e.g. various schemes in upland Britain including the Peak District and Cumbria;
• Pioneering large-scale work on restoring moorland vegetation,
  e.g. with Moors for the Future; and
• Specialist measures to accommodate protected species,
  e.g. badgers (access points, road crossings, new setts, etc.),
  encouraging bats (e.g. the creation of new bat caves), protection
  and rescuing great crested newts, creation of sand martin breeding
  cliffs, exclusion of grazing animals such as deer and rabbit.

For more details on our services relating to habitat creation and
habitat restoration, please contact us