Matt Baker talks to HUGH BUNTING, the man responsible for all things green at Manchester Airport
BUNTING HAS TAKE OFF!
E
arlier in 2007, Manchester City Council was placed under severe pressure to sell their prime asset, Manchester Airport, to create a fund to invest in the city’s future prosperity. No doubt, if the airport were ever to be sold, there would be a feeding frenzy of interested buyers. But, for now, the Council are adamant that the airport will not be sold. With its stock very much in the ascendancy, few could argue against that view. Britain’s second largest airport operator was voted the country’s best airport in 2006 and is taking its environmental responsibilities seriously.
The airport has recently committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2015 for its energy and vehicle use. It was also awarded the city’s first-ever Gold Environmental Business Pledge Award for its broad-reaching commitment to environmental best practice. And, with landscape and habitat management playing a central part in the environment plan, it is a busy time for all grounds professionals. In his 26 years as landscape manager at Britain’s only local authority owned airport, 53-year-old Hugh Bunting has seen constant change. “Manchester airport’s landscape is developing all the time,” he said. “The technology is changing, the emphasis on the environment is so much different to
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when I started off and there are many more considerations we have to factor into our job now.” Perhaps the most notable of these is that of security. “We have to plant shrubs to ensure they reach a lot lower height at maturity for security reasons,” he says, surveying the 335 acres he has to maintain. “This is so that people can’t easily hide anything in the grounds.” With airports no longer able to conceal facts about their CO2
emissions either,
there is plenty of work to be done to make sure the airport remains one of the greenest in Europe. As part of their green plan, a £17m
environmental mitigation package has been launched, calling for six trees to be planted for every one removed, providing or improving two ponds for each lost, planting or restoring over 36km of hedgerow and creating new areas of wildflower grassland and woodland. Other targets include the establishment of two new bat breeding roosts, maintaining thriving badger clans and ensuring that the 46 new ponds are similarly maintained as a suitable habitat for amphibians. Achieving the creation of wildflower grassland has been an arduous process. On sites where the topsoil was completely removed, the exposed dense clay subsoils were inhospitable for germination and establishment of seedlings. Only through
a combination of low and fast release fertiliser, and composted green waste to reduce bulk density and increase porosity, were the seeds able to germinate. Keeping some of the thriving biodiversity away from the airfields is another responsibility, however. “We have to keep birds away from the runway as much as possible,” Hugh explains, mindful of the fact that a plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Manchester earlier this year when two birds were sucked into the starboard engine. “Thankfully bird strike incidents are
extremely low,” he says, adding that a bird control team is employed at the airport to patrol taxi areas and runways and disperse persistent birds through the use of bio-acoustic equipment. The airport also employs a falconer to scare away flocks. “This also becomes our responsibility,”
he explains. “In conjunction with our environment team, we’ve had to reduce the amount of berry-bearing trees and make sure that tall trees are constantly thinned so that they have a thin crown, which makes them unattractive to birds.” Changing weather conditions have also impacted on the job, as milder winters mean the grass needs to be more frequently cut. “We seldom stop mowing nowadays. We’re still mowing well into autumn now and it used to be the case
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