Colliery spoil tips are an industrial and cultural legacy from the south Wales coal industry. During the hey-day of the mines, colliery spoil tips were a black scar on the valley side. As a belated reaction to the Aberfan disaster, the Coal Board, the WDA and Local Authorities removed and reclaimed the dangerous coal tips. The remaining tips, after years of natural regeneration, now support habitat of considerable local biodiversity value.  

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Due to the nature of colliery spoil, free draining grassland can occur in close proximity to wet ground with plant communities reminiscent of Glamorgan’s coastal dune slacks with hundreds of southern marsh orchids and round-leaved wintergreens. Heathland areas often support encrusted surfaces of cladonia lichens, communities that are usually found on mountain tops or the northern tundra. Scrub is often a strong component of sites with gorse and low growing, lichen covered hawthorns, and colonising oak trees. On longer established sites, woodland naturally colonises but only when soils have had time to develop. Locally distinctive alien plant species are also a feature with for instance yellow flowered small cudweed and pearly everlasting typical non-native, but non-problem species. Many coal spoil tips are also important as refuges of grassland, ffridd and heathland fauna, with superb invertebrate communities (a third of Britain’s bee fauna has been recorded on just a handful of RCT colliery spoil tips), grassland fungi assemblages, complex lower plants communities and ideal reptile habitat.

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The biodiversity and cultural historic importance of colliery spoil is sometimes at odds with a desire to sweep away reminders of an industrial past. In the past, dangerous tips were reclaimed and other sites were remodelled and re-engineered. The recent land slip at the Old Smokey, Tylorstown, during Storm Dennis has led to renewed concern regarding tip stability.  Fortunately, a greater recognition of the ecological importance of colliery spoil is leading to a more biodiversity orientated end-use for tip remediation works. Tree planting schemes are now perhaps the greatest immediate threat to colliery spoil habitats, while lack of long-term sympathetic management will inevitably see many colliery spoil sites continuing to succeed into scrub and woodland cover, with a resulting loss of habitat diversity. The challenge for this Action Plan is to raise awareness of the significance of colliery spoil to the biodiversity of the Valleys, encourage their conservation and management, whilst promoting informal enjoyment by the general public and, where remediation works are needed, promote an after use of nature conservation based on the dynamic processes of natural regeneration.