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BirdLife andHeidelberg Materials

The role quarries play in creating habitat and promoting biodiversity is becoming better understood thanks to successful partnerships like BirdLife International and Heidelberg Materials  – one of the world’s largest manufacturers of building materials. Since 2012, the partnership has been based on shared values of promoting and protecting biodiversity while using natural resources sustainably. Heidelberg Materials aims to contribute to global biodiversity through better management of quarry operations and their nature restoration planning and programmes.

These aims form part of the groups’ 2030 Sustainability Commitments. In support of this, BirdLife has been assisting in developing the strategy to meet the biodiversity related goals which include providing best practice guidelines, training and conducting global studies to help determine the impacts and status of the operations on biodiversity.

If carefully designed, it has been proven that mineral extraction operations can reduce their impacts on landscapes and biodiversity while simultaneously creating opportunities for unique habitats and rare species to flourish. Together with local BirdLife partners, the Heidelberg Materials group of companies are globally implementing local biodiversity projects – resulting in the perfect combination of global commitment with local action.

Initiatives like The Quarry Life Award, an international research competition, combine social community dynamics and sciences to promote and educate people about biodiversity in quarries. Thanks to mining sites having low human disturbances, they provide a great variety of landscapes and habitats that often favour many pioneering species. Often their populations are threatened outside of quarries due to the lack of habitat and other forms of land use.

The unique array and confinement of habitats sometimes promote incomparable local flora and fauna diversity. Heidelberg Materials, through the Quarry Life Award and its projects, aims to raise the knowledge of the biological value of mining sites and contribute to further enhancing them. Over the years projects entered into the competition have made valuable contributions to scientific research on habitat creation within quarries and led to the development of management guidelines for many threatened species.


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Projects

As the number of the partnership’s annual biodiversity projects grow, you can track the exciting progress by clicking on the Heidelberg Materials-BirdLife Project Map below.

It provides a visual narrative of the diversity and distribution of our projects to date, which aim to improve the biodiversity in and around our extractive sites by working together with local communities, environmental authorities and scientists. Each project is pin-pointed geographically on an interactive map and you’ll find short summaries detailing the activities.  

For further reading, a downloadable Project Fact Sheet accompanies each project. The projects range from conservation initiatives for select species and habitats, through to community involvement, and land management. This diversity highlights the success of the partnership in benefiting both people and the planet. 


Get in touch

If you would like to speak to BirdLife about corporate sponsorship opportunities then we would love to hear from you.

Please be assured that anything we may discuss will be held in the strictest of confidence, and you will be under no pressure or obligation to support us.

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