'Brownfields can be rich habitats': the abandoned oil refinery where wildlife now thrives

Conservationists say Canvey Wick in Essex shows potential for brownfield sites as havens for nature"You must see this!" Marc Outten shoulders past tangles of blackthorn and shimmies around hummocks of blackberries the size of buses and glades filled with wildflowers. What beautiful wildlife spectacle awaits?Weaving across carpets of bird's foot trefoil, we reach our destination: a vast, barren circle of asphalt, 70 metres across - the ruins of an uncompleted oil refinery. Continue reading...