| Articles |
| *BSG WINS Sustain Magazine Biodiversity award 2010 |
| *BSG appears on Countryfile |
| *A new office for Oxford |
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BSG WINS Sustain Magazine Biodiversity award
We are delighted to announce that at the Sustain Magazine annual awards on Tuesday this week BSG and LDA Design won the award for Biodiversity for the brown roof at Woolwich Arsenal. The biodiversity award is given in recognition of schemes that can demonstrate conservation benefits, impact mitigation and biodiversity enhancement.
The brown roof was constructed on Building 10, during the initial phase of the Woolwich Arsenal site, being redeveloped by Berkeley Homes (Urban Regeneration) Ltd, in south east London. BSG worked in collaboration with LDA Design and project engineers and architects to develop the brown roof design to maximise the potential biodiversity benefits of the scheme. Following completion of the construction of the roof BSG undertook monitoring of invertebrates colonisation as a part of our biodiversity research programme recording two nationally scarce species in the first season.
Dr Peter Shepherd, partner of BSG said: "This is a significant brown roof that has provided a great opportunity for monitoring how these features are colonised by plants and animals. The monitoring was made possible by the support and assistance of Berkeley Homes (Urban regeneration) Ltd for which we are very grateful. We look forward to continuing our monitoring this year increasing our understanding of the ecology of vegetated roofs".
The judges commented: “Not only has the Winner designed and implemented a scheme of ecological integrity, they are also monitoring to assess impacts."
London currently has circa 18,000 square metres of brown roofs. The Woolwich Arsenal winning entry has made a significant addition to this, its size of over 5,000 square metres, makes it one of the largest in the capital.
Dr Peter Shepherd accepting the Sustain Magazine Biodiversity award for Woolwich Arsenal
Woolwich Arsenal - award winning brown roof
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Dave Stiles one of our resident bat experts based in our Bakewell office has been advising on the restoration of natural and manmade caves associated with purpose built view points on the Wye Valley walk. The view points were created by Valentine Morris in the eighteenth century and they are being restored thanks to Heritage Lottery Funding. Public access to the cave beneath the Eagle’s Nest viewpoint has been deliberately restricted in order to try and encourage bats, specifically lesser horseshoes, to use it as a roost. This is compensation for the loss of another cave downriver, which had to be in-filled as it was unstable. We are currently monitoring the cave as part of an EPS licence to determine whether it is being used by lesser horseshoes during the winter (for hibernation). Dave will be talking to Matt Baker about his fascinating project on Countryfile, 6pm BBC1, Sunday 28 February.
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Following a tough 18 months for most industries (ecological consultancy has been no exception) we are pleased to have been in a position to appoint three new consultant ecologists to our team in our Oxford office early in the New Year. To accommodate our Oxford team we have moved across the car park at Worton Rectory Park to a new office to prvide us with the space and office environment we need to meet the needs of our clients. We look forward to welcoming clients to our new office from March.
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