In a second instalment from on of the UK’s Overseas Territories, Dan Pullen, RSPB’s International Site Casework Officer, looks at the lengths developers are going to in the efforts to limit impact on the island’s unique wildlife. The stakes are high to take the right decisions and do the work to the highest standards.
Development with Nature Conservation
As I mentioned in my previous blog, our time on St Helena highlighted how much change is coming to the island. Since the UK government’s decision to fund an airport on St Helena last November, the island government has lost no time in getting construction started on this major infrastructure project. First there were preparatory works which involved building a new quay (to allow the contractor’s ship to dock on the island – the first time a ship has ever done so), a ‘haul road’ to connect the quay to the airport site (which involved a lot of blasting and excavation work in this extremely hilly place), a prefab residential village for much of the work force, and drilling numerous boreholes to get a water source for all the concrete the project will use – as there are no surface water sources in the semi-desert on Prosperous Plain. When we were on island, they were just gearing up for the start of the ‘real’ work– that of blasting and levelling the (not so flat) plain, and filling in a rather large valley so that the airport runway can be built.
The (sort of) flat Prosperous Bay Plain – location of St Helena’s new airport, and creepy crawlies of distinction
Large projects such as this obviously have significant impacts on the environment. As I discussed last time, the impacts on the wirebird’s nesting habitat have been mitigated by providing enhanced habitat elsewhere on the island. This leaves potential impacts on some endemic plant populations in the dry valley (such as the rare Barn Fern) where the runway will go, and on numerous invertebrate species, such as the endemic mole spider, which lives in burrows under the desolate surface. Along with the St Helena National Trust, we’ll have to keep a close eye to make sure that the airport contractors correctly follow the mitigation and restoration plans to ensure that these priceless plants and animals are retained in sufficient numbers to ensure their long-term survival.
The airport is due to open in 2015, and the island government have big plans to develop the island’s tourist economy to take advantage of the much better access. However, they have been making efforts to ensure that this new development is properly regulated, and that it does protect the island’s fantastic natural and cultural heritage (which is, after all, what tourists will come to St Helena to see). As such, we were busy earlier in the year providing comments on a range of strategic plans, to make sure that the environment is put at the heart of this exciting chapter in the island’s history.
The site for a new hotel and golf course at Broad Bottom – and lots of wirebirds
We are already starting to see major tourist development proposals coming forward, including the SHELCO ‘Wirebird Hills’ development which I’ve mentioned previously. This is a planned super-green hotel with attached golf course in the lush hills in the centre of the island. Of course, as this site contains relatively flat areas (compared to most other parts on the island which are most definitely not..) this site is also an important area for breeding wirebirds, so we were concerned that the proposal put in place adequate measures to ensure that the site retained sufficient numbers of the birds to warrant its name. From our perspective, the planning permission was granted without making the developer specify, sufficiently and in advance, the measures they were going to take to deliver this.
We’ve therefore been in consultation with the developer directly to try to make sure the details are right, and to their credit, at the moment they’re making all the right noises. Our visit to the site highlighted just how good it is for wirebirds – we saw at least five pairs in only a few minutes – but also the challenges they face in developing it – it’s going to require quite a lot of earth-moving and levelling to get a golf course here!
There is lots of potential to develop St Helena as a green tourist destination and the island government is trying to go about it the right way. However, everyone needs to walk the talk – it’s always easy to take shortcuts when development is desperately needed, and unfortunately shortcuts on St Helena could have disastrous consequences given that many species found nowhere else on earth persist in only tiny areas.
A wirebird chick being fitted with a harmless ring
Next time my colleague Jonathan Hall will be talking about St Helena’s expanding seabird populations, our close encounters with some masked boobies, and the potential that maybe, just maybe, a petrel species may still exist which has been thought extinct for hundreds of years…
Dan will be back for a final instalment soon
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