Life Elia

Lack of concern for biodiversity owing to current practices

Management practices currently used to ensure the safety of high-voltage power lines can sometimes have a negative impact on biodiversity for the following reasons:

• Effects on the quality of soil and water: preserving the openness of the safety corridors as well as limiting the height of the vegetation means that the electrical operator must regularly clear the area of vegetation. This way of managing the vegetation, undertaken by heavy machinery, packs down the soil, attacks the uppermost layers, and upsets the soil microfauna.
• Disturbance of certain species in unfavourable seasons.

The project offers different solutions : the management practices implemented during this project and the reflection given to long-term management will feature the following possibilities, in particular:

1. A reduction in the area that needs mowing and clearing as well as its frequency by installing a structure of edges and grassy borders which require fewer management interventions.
2. Restoration of moors, peatlands and sparse meadows. These environments are stable and clearage operations serve no purpose.
3. Installation of protected orchards with small-sized indigenous fruit trees.
4. Planning periods when intervention is forbidden for the most sensitive types of soil, which will prevent the physical destruction of the soil as well as the habitats and species that are found there.