The Blythe Valley nature reserve surrounding the industrial estate is being turned into housing. Green net fences billow in the wind over rain-filled hollows.
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kestrelart 
I know people must be housed but it is a pity to destroy a nature reserve in the process
True. It had been a reclaimed brown field site but there is very little virgin countryside in England.
We all need our second homes
To be fair this is on a brown field site and these will be first homes. The nature reserve was reconstructed in old gravel pits, making wetlands, scrub and woodland. It wasn’t great but in an urban setting it was something. Two years so I heard cuckoos from where I stood this weekend drawing the diggers.
Badass good!
People have to be housed but destroying a nature reserve???
Truth to tell, it was reclaimed industrial land to start with. This had all been gravel pits, and surrounding fields, which was remade as a reserve with wooded areas and meadows. But still its loss is real. I live in an industrialised farmed area, no wilderness here. All our reserves have been reclaimed from human use and are valuable still for wildlife. It’s getting harder to find continuous paths through countryside for walking or good places to cycle, still less as refuges for nature.
I recall the old gas works being demolished in north Coventry, 30 or more years ago… it was designated a brownfield site, but the buddleias flourished on that contaminated ground and attracted butterflies and other insects and wildlife. Now there is a huge football stadium and god knows what else not just on the old gasworks site itself but seemingly everywhere in that vicinity. Presumably the attraction is the closeness of the M6 motorway.
Wait til HS2 happens. I’m told it’s going to take out 100 reserves, some ancient woodland.
I wonder are there many ancient woodlands left in the UK? Pockets here and there. It’s slowly getting to be the same here in Ireland. I thought that that train thing had been abandoned as too costly… On the occasions that I have visited nature reserves in the UK with friends I have found them to be full of twitchers with flashy photographic equipment and eerrmm well, overcrowded with ‘sightseers’ laughs! I shouldn’t be like that but surely one visits such places in order to get away from the crowded city streets? A bit like art galleries in a strange sort of way!