Translocation project wins top industry award

A 20-year project to protect and preserve the Alchemilla micans, Britain’s rarest lady’s mantle, at Hanson’s Keepershield quarry in Northumberland scooped the top prize in the biodiversity innovation category at the Mineral Products Association’s biennial biodiversity and restoration awards at the Royal Society in London.

The rare plant is found on only a handful of sites in north east England, all of which are grasslands with shallow soils overlying whinstone or dolerite. One of the most prolific at Keepershield was in an area designated as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) which had planning permission for quarrying. In the late 1990s, and after widespread consultation, it was decided to transplant the entire habitat onto bare level whinstone in a corner of the site that will eventually form part of the final restoration plan.

The turf was stripped and stored, and the shallow topsoil taken to the new site, known as New Scroggs, where the turf was relaid. The alchemilla plants, which had earlier been dug up by volunteer students from Germany and potted temporarily, were then replanted.

The translocation was carefully monitored over the following years, and has been so successful that New Scroggs is now designated as a SSSI in its own right.

Steve Ormerod, professor of ecology at Cardiff University and until recently chairman of the RSPB, presented the award to operations manager John Austin, quarry manager Richard Cunningham and landscape architect John Ingham.

"This is a wonderful example of a quarrying company going to great lengths to support, conserve and help restore our increasingly threatened biodiversity,” he said.

“One of the best examples of a whin grassland still in existence has been successfully re-created from scratch.”