Services | Haywood Contracting

Rivers

Historically within the Northeast, many rivers have been used for industry and have barriers to fish migration. Re-naturalising sections of rivers with fish passes, re-meandering straightened sections, removal of weirs, culverts, pipes and other industrial structures can easily help. With increased extreme weather events, bank protection is ever more important. We offer two approaches in bank protection, with soft we use timber, whereas hard protection uses rock armour blocks to deflect the river. We can offer sympathetic self-regenerative structures to protect these vulnerable rivers.

Soft and hard bank protection
Bed stabilisation
Fish easement
In-channel habitat enhancements

With the ever-increasing variable weather events, we can help with flood management, lowering flood banks to create spill out areas with leaky dams. This can be done on catchment scale with amazing results.

Channel re-profiling
Channel deflectors and riffles
Re-meandering straightened channels
Leaky dams

Wetlands

Wetland habitats are areas of land that are either permanently or seasonally saturated with water. They teem with biodiversity providing homes for many endangered species, so are sites of environmental significance, as well as helping to prevent flooding and enhance water quality. 90% of our wetlands in the UK have been lost due to the intensification of agriculture and industrialisation. Creating habitat such as wader scrapes, ponds, lakes and saturated ground means that wildlife can quickly flourish.

Wader scrapes
Pond creation
Lakes

The North Pennines has a long history of lead mining. These mines are still polluting our rivers, many years after the mining has finished. This results in heavy metals travelling down the catchment, depositing in floodplains, estuaries and river banks. Working at the source of the problem in these fragile upland environments, we can create sympathetic bank protection, wetlands and flood alleviations to fit into the landscape and that have the potential to protect historic sites as well as helping to reduce the heavy metals entering the water courses.

Metal mining protection

Peatland Restoration

Peatland restoration means returning this vital habitat to its best possible condition. This often involves re-wetting or reinstating old hydrological regimes as dried out peatland omits large quantities of CO2. When it is re-wetted it becomes a carbon sink, which in turn helps to control emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide. Britain has the majority of natural upland peat in Europe, however, it is massively degraded following years of draining for agriculture and forestry and needs preservation, with CO2 capture being the main objective. The processes involved include:

Grip blocking and peat bunding
Peat re-profiling grips
Timber and stone dams
Peat hagg reprofiling
Bare peat restoration through re-vegetation and heather brash spreading
Sphagnum moss reintroduction

Habitat Management

Targeted habitat management seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. This is vital to maintain the diversity and richness of not only the most important locations, but also to protect species living on development sites.

We can supply a range of amphibian fencing to aid with the exclusion of newts and other species to allow activities to take place. We work closely with the ecologist and the client to achieve their goals. Often habitat creation is required to offset a development. Ponds, hibernacula, woodland and specialist grassland habitats can all be created in a sympathetic manner.