Who would’ve believed that ? Airports are reservoirs of life, according to the Aéro Biodiversité association.
Aéro Biodiversité was born from an observation, an empirical observation. “I am an amateur pilot and during my flights I had the feeling that the airfields were home to significant flora and fauna,” explains Lionel Guérin, president of Hop!, a subsidiary of Air France. With other nature enthusiasts like him, also from the world of aviation, he decided to get to the bottom of it. To be sure of doing quality scientific work, he approached François Bouvier, honorary attaché at the National Museum of Natural History.
François Bouvier is convinced by the project and becomes president of the scientific committee of Aéro Biodiversité. From now on, since 2013, the association has drawn up a photograph of the ecosystems present on the airfields every year.
It’s all about citizen science. Concretely, these are observations and a census in the field, at a given and unchanged period, of the fauna and flora on the site. “We consider that our work is expressed as much by the writing of our reports (…) as by the pedagogy and the explanations that we can achieve during each of our visits to the field”, explains the association.
Unsuspected biodiversity
“You have to understand that the airports and aerodromes in France represent 50,000 hectares. That is five times the area of Paris, explains Lionel Guérin. But these plains have a double interest. Not only are there not many left, because they are quickly occupied by livestock, industry or real estate. But in addition these plains are not treated. There is no chemical input on these plots. Let us recall that in France the artificialization of the soil is progressing by 24,000 hectares per year.
It is therefore difficult to believe, at a time when air travel is often considered a real plague for the environment, but airfields “are real refuges for biodiversity and the species that live in the plains”, underlines Lionel Guerin.
Judge instead. Since its creation, the association has been able to make more than 9,000 observations of invertebrates, identify more than 1,400 species of plants, observe more than 260 species of birds, record with certainty nearly 30 species of chiroptera, even around twenty species of reptiles and about fifteen species of amphibians. Twenty-four species of bats out of 35 present in France are present on an airport plain. Just like 45 species of orchids out of around 160. Tree sparrows, a species that has almost disappeared from Ile-de-France, have even been observed at Orly.
A new label
After a few months of hesitation, the association now headed by Hélène Abraham is on new paths. Two seasonal workers have been recruited on permanent contracts as well as two coordinators. With a team of four permanent staff, the association can carry out its work with seasoned professionals. In 2022, more than 50 sites will be covered by teams of professional naturalists in mainland France and overseas from Aéro Biodiversité.
In addition, at the end of 2020 and during 2021, the Aéro Biodiversité teams, in close collaboration with the scientific committee, worked on the development of a label in order to promote the work and commitment of airports registered in the Aéro approach. Biodiversity. This is how the “aerobio” label was created.
The latter was tested at three partner airports in 2021, in order to adjust the various evaluation criteria and will be offered more widely in 2022. The four pillars of the label are “understanding and improving biodiversity, local staff investment, communicate and promote biodiversity, anchoring in the territory”, specifies Lionel Guérin.
So this is a very fine initiative led by several players in the air sector. “One hectare of grassland can capture as much carbon as one hectare of forest. The diversity of life is the genetic diversity that allows life on earth, let’s not forget that,” concluded the leader.
