Tilbury power station: hotbed of ecology? (Image: (Image: Webbaviation.co.uk)

PETER SHAW clambers over an ash pile outside one of the UK’s larger power stations. I follow as he treads carefully to avoid the profusion of orchids, tests the thin soil for signs of earthworms, and lifts a metal sheet, revealing a grass snake and a slow-worm. No adders today, but they are here somewhere.

This is Tilbury, east of London. It is one of hundreds of forgotten biological treasures in the UK’s “brownfield badlands”. The nation that gave birth to the industrial revolution is now the home of a remarkable wildlife revival on these old industrial sites.

“Brownfield sites are as important for biodiversity as ancient woodlands, yet we are encouraging people to build on them,” says Matt Shardlow of UK invertebrate conservation organisation Buglife.


The UK government recognises brownfield sites as a development opportunity. In England alone, such sites cover 62,000 hectares. Much of that land has little ecological value and is suitable for redevelopment, Shardlow admits, but hidden among the wastelands are gems where rare and endangered species can be found.

Shaw, a biologist at the University of Roehampton in London, shares that view. He has been coming to Tilbury for more than 20 years. It is always different. This time we find bird’s foot trefoil flowers doing well. “These brownfield sites routinely support more scarce wild species than farmed land,” says Shaw. They have one in six of the UK’s rare insects, for instance.

Paradoxically, it is the very features that would seem to make the sites hostile to wildlife – chemical pollution, abandoned buildings, thin soils – that create a multitude of ecological niches ripe for colonisation. The level of ecological variation found at Tilbury and other brownfield sites is no longer found in the intensively managed and homogenised countryside. These sites have, in effect, replaced lost heaths and meadows as wildlife habitat.

Unfortunately, says Shardlow, few of the UK local councils that decide the fate of the sites employ ecologists to assess which should be preserved. Without that input, ecologically valuable sites may be redeveloped, or not afforded proper care.

We find an example of how important that care is a couple of kilometres from Tilbury, at West Thurrock Lagoon. The lagoon, leftover from a demolished riverside power station, is one of only two known UK sites that supports a rare invertebrate, the distinguished jumping spider (Sitticus distinguendus).

Or it was. As we clamber over the wall, Shaw gasps. Much of the lagoon has dried out since his last visit. The place is overgrown with poisonous hemlock. This is bad news for the distinguished jumping spider. Its only other UK home is another brownfield site in Kent, says Shaw. That site might not be around much longer either – it is marked for development, and could soon be home to a huge theme park.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Living treasures of the brownfield badlands”