Manchester Airport's objective is to limit its effect on nature conservation, landscape, archaeological resources and cultural heritage and where possible, to create new features and enhance the ecological and landscape value of the area.
Landscaping, ecology and cultural heritage may not be themes that immediately come to mind when thinking about airport operations and their environmental impact.
The airport covers a large site and whether it's the grass around the runways or formal landscaped areas around the terminal buildings, these areas have to be managed. In addition to this the airport purchased a large amount of land to mitigate for loss of habitats when building the second runway. There is now the Second Runway Trail which is a nature conservation area.
The land under active ecological and landscape management at the airport consists of:
- Land around the Second Runway Trail (land within the Landscape and Habitat Management Plan area of LHMP).
- Formal landscaped areas around the terminal buildings and main gateways.
- Aviation Viewing Park.
- And other non-operational land holdings of principally arable land.
