Nissan engineers create 'thriving' new wildlife habitat at manufacturing plant with deer and birds of prey spotted

Nissan engineers have created a new wildlife habitat at their Sunderland car manufacturing plant.  Video created by Nissan Sunderland

Transcript

00:00My name's Andy Barker, engineering manager responsible for EV360 infrastructure projects.

00:09In a nutshell, rewilding is the restoration of a natural space. In this case, what we've

00:13done is regenerate unused and unmaintained marshland to allow a new ecosystem to thrive.

00:20What we wanted to utilise is uninhabited marshland at the south of the site to basically create

00:25a holistic green space using green energy, but also repurpose that space to regenerate

00:32it to create a habitat for our local species.

00:37The AMIRO region's strategy to support Ambition 2030 is EV360. What this means is decarbonisation.

00:45So what we've done is we're growing our own renewables, which helps reduce our dependency

00:50from carbon-intensive grid, but also create a green space we can use to help offset carbon

00:56used elsewhere.

00:59Probably the biggest challenge we had was the disruption to the area. So we weren't

01:04sure about the rate of recovery. However, we saw specialist advice and through engineered

01:10solutions I'm pleased to say the progress has been very, very good.

01:15What the rewilding activity has done is created a habitat where we have a wide variety of

01:19species from birds of prey to nesting birds to dragonflies.

01:27What we see for the future is opportunity. What we want to do is have social inclusion.

01:31A lot of staff who work at Sunland Plant don't appreciate what we've got actually on our

01:34boundary and what we want to do is get staff involved so that we can maintain this for

01:40the longer term.