Heathrow have unveiled its new Nature Traffic Control Tower, a birdwatching hideaway right in the heart of one of its 13 local nature conservation sites.
The one-of-a-kind bird hide, designed to resemble the airport’s iconic control tower, is free to visit as part of a bookable tour of the area. It serves as a camouflaged lookout, allowing visitors to watch a huge range of bird species ‘coming into land’, along with other local wildlife.
The tower has been created to raise awareness of Heathrow’s Nature Positive Plan, detailing how the airport will better understand and, where possible, reduce its environmental impacts. Heathrow’s commitment to building on its ongoing efforts to protect and actively restore local biodiversity and ecosystems forms part of the airport’s wider Connecting People and Planet sustainability strategy, which includes a £250m investment from the airport into carbon and sustainability improvements for the 2022-2026 period.
The new birdwatching experience follows the recent upsurge of the hobby across the globe, with #birdwatching generating over 2 billion views on TikTok in recent years.
YouTube’s top plane spotter, Jerry Dyer (Big Jet TV), was invited to test out the Nature Traffic Control Tower. Famed for his enthusiastic, viral commentary on aircraft landings, Jerry brought his unique energy to birdwatching as the first to step into the bird hide, right in the heart of Heathrow, streaming his experience to his followers: youtu.be/94L-44J4aY8?si=HqHxK3vAWanSfaRF
Heathrow manages 170 hectares of land across the 13 biodiversity sites surrounding the airport – equating to 10% of Heathrow’s overall footprint. The Nature Traffic Control Tower has popped up in local site, Causeway Nature Reserve, where visitors can book a free birdwatching session and guided nature tour with one of Heathrow’s expert ecologists. The tour around the biodiversity site will take nature enthusiasts through diverse habitats, including freshwater lakes, reedbeds, grasslands and woodlands – offering the chance to spot rare flowers, plants and wildlife.
In addition to 79 species of bird soaring in the skies, visitors may encounter Britain’s rarest native tree, the Black Poplar, as well as the Small Heath butterfly and grass snakes. The surrounding meadows and farmland across Heathrow’s biodiversity sites also host rare spiders and beetles, more than 30 butterfly species, native bluebells, wild daffodils, sweet violets and a wide range of other wildlife, including kingfishers, harvest mice and barn owls.
The River Crane, which flows alongside Causeway Nature Reserve, is home to fish species such as the European eel and boasts some of the borough’s oldest woodland along its banks, dating back to the 16th century.
Nearby, the Princes Lakes biodiversity site is also home to a rich variety of species, including the rare Nathusius’ Pipistrelle bat, hundreds of moth species, 90 species of bee, and serves as a national winter hub for the diving Smew duck, Little Egret, grey heron and other waterfowl.
The Nature Positive Plan outlines how Heathrow will better understand and reduce its impacts on nature. Highlights include expanding the amount of land the airport manages for conservation purposes, reducing water pollution through improved surface water management, growing its network of local biodiversity sites and continuing to invest in UK forests and peatland, to help lock up carbon and protect and restore nature.
Heathrow’s biodiversity sites have maintained The Wildlife Trusts’ Biodiversity Benchmark award for land management as a result of its nature-positive work, 17 years in a row.
The Nature Positive Plan launch comes after Heathrow experienced its busiest day for arrivals ever on Easter Monday, when over 140,000 passengers landed at the airport. Almost a million passengers (963,000) used the airport during the Easter weekend, in total. The Thursday beforehand saw over 250,000 passengers travel through the airport – making it the sixth day that has happened this year already, a record for Heathrow. Some of the most popular destinations amongst passengers included Riga, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.