The theme of this year’s international World Wetlands Day (today - Monday, 2 February) * is “Wetlands for our future”. At a time where evidence of a changing climate grows stronger - eight of the UK’s top ten warmest years (since 1910) have occurred since 1992 - planning for the future has become an increasingly urgent issue. That’s why we’ve been keeping a close eye on some of our most important coastal sites, which are vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges combined with coastal erosion, an ongoing process where the sea slowly claims land over time.
We are addressing these challenges in two key ways.
First, preparing for habitat loss by ensuring new wetlands are available further from the sea. Last year we were able to show how land management by the RSPB and others including National Trust, Natural England and Wildlife Trusts, has improved the fortunes of one of Britain’s rarer birds, the bittern. Until suitable areas were once more available to them inland, bittern populations had been clinging on to the edges of the country in coastal marshes. Since these are freshwater birds, the loss of coastal wetlands to the sea or conversion to brackish marsh would have been catastrophic. Now the bittern faces a more secure future, with sites like RSPB Ham Wall in Somerset and RSPB Lakenheath in Suffolk providing inland refuge from changes on the coast.
The map on the left below (reproduced here with the kind permission of the BTO) shows how bitterns have moved from coastal to inland sites as new habitat has been created for them, while the right-hand map shows coastal areas affected by storm surges in the winter of 2013-14. This demonstrates how large scale planning and land management has helped the bittern population recover and remain sustainable. (You can click the maps to enlarge them).
Secondly, we’re using an innovative approach on the coast to work with the sea rather than trying to fight its progress. Our project at Titchwell Marsh in Norfolk gently let the sea in to create new saltmarsh, which, combined with a new sea wall, meant better protection for the site’s freshwater marsh and the wetland wildlife depending on it. Avocets, bearded tits, bitterns and marsh harriers all nest in the freshwater part of the reserve.
At RSPB Medmerry in West Sussex the encroachment of the sea threatened 350 homes, a water treatment works, an access road needed by 10,000 people and Europe’s second largest caravan park. So the Environment Agency created a 7km floodbank and let sea water into the site. As with Titchwell, this released the pressure of the sea on the land and as a bonus created a fantastic intertidal wetland habitat catering for waders and brent geese (below).
The same thinking is being applied to Wallasea in Essex. Spoil from works on the Crossrail project, which last week began tunnelling under the City of London, will go towards the formation of a range of wetland habitats in Europe’s largest man-made coastal nature reserve. This immense project, like Medmerry, benefits people and wildlife, as by raising the land and controlling water flows it will remove the risk of a sudden flood blocking the port at Burnham-on-Crouch. This will form large mudflats, saltmarsh and lagoons. In addition to providing sites for nesting avocets, and wintering geese, Wallasea will also form the perfect habitat for spoonbills which are beginning to re-colonise from continental Europe.
The arrival of the spoonbill, which is continuing to extend its former range, offers an interesting point to ponder. As Europe’s climate and habitats change, which other birds might need to alter their range to include the UK in the coming decades, and how can we help them to thrive alongside our native species? In the last decade, purple herons, great white egrets, little bitterns and cattle egrets have followed in the little egret’s bright yellow footsteps as they begin to breed in the UK. We expect this trend to continue with species like glossy ibis, which attempted to nest at RSPB Frampton Marsh in Lincolnshire last year.
Wetlands – protecting us from flooding, and providing a home to a huge range of wildlife. What’s not to love? Why not head down to your local wetland this weekend to mark the occasion with some winter wildlife-spotting?
*World Wetlands Day falls on the 2nd of February each year. This celebrates the anniversary of the initial adoption of the Convention on Wetlands, or Ramsar Convention, in 1971 when 21 countries signed up to protect their significant wetland sites. There are now 168 nations signed up to this agreement which promotes conservation and sustainable use of wetlands and the resources they provide. 86 RSPB reserves are, or are within, Ramsar sites: areas under special protection due to the importance of their wetlands.