Dave Bishop, MCFly’s biodiversity correspondent, writes about the Metrolink expansion. His views here are his own.

There’s an ecological disaster unfolding in South Manchester – unfolding with the full approval and support of our city council. I refer, of course, to the construction of the Metrolink to the Airport tram line … perhaps you’ve noticed?

In theory we shouldn’t be experiencing any sort of ecological disaster as a result of this project, because Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) have a published ‘Wildlife Habitat and Tree Replacement Policy’ (http://www.tfgm.com/corporate/environment_policy_documents.cfm) – which is full of juicy promises to safeguard and conserve our local biodiversity, for example:

“The development of transport infrastructure must ensure the protection and enhancement of protected landscapes, habitats and sites; and take opportunities to protect and enhance biodiversity, for example, through the sympathetic design and location of infrastructure.”

And:

“In carrying out its development programmes TfGM recognises an obligation to conserve, protect, and where possible, enhance the natural environment and to mitigate the impact on biodiversity and therefore to protect important wildlife habitats and to take full account of new developments on wildlife itself.”

And so on and so on …

In reality, what all of this seems to be boiling down to is: “We’re going to trash some of your best remaining wildlife habitats – and then we’ll plant some Mac-saplings that we hope you’ll be fooled into believing represent adequate compensation for what we’ve destroyed”.

In this posting I’ll concentrate on trees. When reading it, please bear in mind that trees tend to become more biodiverse as they get older (i.e. they support more and more mosses, lichens, insects, birds, bats etc. as they age and some of the organisms connected with old trees are rare).

Recently, we lost over thirty large trees along Mauldeth Road West in Chorlton – all cut down to make way for Metrolink. These were mainly London Planes (Platanus x hispanica) and Common Limes (Tilia x europaea). Both of these taxa are ‘man-made’ hybrids, often planted as street trees. Nevertheless, they were big, handsome trees of some age and of considerable amenity value.

It’s often assumed that such trees are not as important for biodiversity as native trees – but the devil is in the details! Recently, I’ve been investigating an unusual local phenomenon: on a number of local roads some London Planes have a particular species of fern growing on them (a phenomenon known as ‘epiphysis’). One would expect to find epiphytic ferns on old, native Oaks, in ancient woodland in, Devon or Cornwall – but not on street trees in a major city? I had an opportunity to discuss this subject with a national fern expert and he told me that he had not encountered epiphytic ferns on London Planes in any other British city – and it could be unique to South Manchester; but now TfGM have destroyed around a third of the population before it’s even been properly studied.

Even more grievous is the impending destruction of veteran native Oak trees in Wythenshawe. Alison Hunt, who is Biodiversity Officer for the West Didsbury Residents’ Association, noted that along Poundswick Lane (in Wythenshawe) veteran Oak trees were not being protected from the on-going Metrolink works. Alison has described these trees as:

“ … veteran Oak trees of great historic and ecological value, specifically retained from the countryside in the design of Wythenshawe, and have been duly honoured by local street names. The trees are of huge amenity value and retain important green links in the urban landscape.”

She has measured the girths of these trees and found them to be around 3m – this would make them at least 100 years old.

She wrote to TfGM who replied as follows:

“I understand that you are aware of our tree replacement policy which provides that more trees will be replaced than are removed. TfGM and our contractor, MPT, discuss all tree removals, tree planting and maintaining the safety of trees during construction with Manchester City Council. The trees that you have photographed [i.e. the old Oak trees] will be removed as part of the ongoing works. However, the current draft tree planting proposals include the potential replanting of 30 new trees (plus other soft landscaping) along Brownley Road.”

On reading this fatuous missive, Green Party member, Anne Power responded:

“How do you plant veteran English Oaks???? Outrageous!

It certainly is outrageous – but is it crass and ignorant … or deeply cynical?

Planting Mac-saplings to compensate for the destruction of priceless, irreplaceable old Oaks, like those on Poundswick Lane, evokes for me an image of a contractor walking into the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece and saying: “Hmmm! We’re going to have to sandblast this ceiling, you know. But don’t worry – when we’ve finished we’ll give it a nice coat of whitewash!”

Note also the role of Manchester City Council in this sorry tale. In spite of fancy ‘Biodiversity Action Plans’ they have a dismal record with respect to Manchester’s wildlife (have you got a couple of hours?). Asking them what to do about veteran trees is like asking a developer what to do about a green field site or the lions at the zoo what to do about the baby antelopes! We all know that MCC is completely fixated on expanding the airport and they think that they need a posh new transport link from the city to this planned atmosphere and countryside devouring beast.

Finally, it would appear that TfGM can’t even get the tree planting right. In early 2011 their contractors planted around 700 trees on a site near the St Werburgh’s Road tram stop in Chorlton. By August around 540 (77%) of these trees were dead and had to be re-planted. And to pile irony on irony they didn’t need to plant trees on the site in the first place because it was full of self-seeded saplings!

TfGM’s ‘Wildlife Habitat and Tree Replacement Policy’ is, of course, a shoddy, ill-thought-through, mendacious load of rubbish and its fancy promises are turning out to bear no resemblance to reality.

Dave Bishop, 05.04.2012

Addendum – after the May 3rd local authority elections we hope to do an interview with TfGM covering biodiversity and a range of other issues. We will raise the points made in the above article. Marc Hudson