RSPB Scotland’s Stephen Inglis explains how an upgrade to the 200 year-old seawall at our Loch Gruinart nature reserve on Islay will mean Greenland barnacle and white-fronted geese can continue to spend their winters on Islay, even with the threat of increasingly severe storms and sea level rises due to climate change.
As we head towards the short days of winter the weather in Scotland can often seem dull, damp and driech. However, these very conditions are ideal for many migrant bird species trying to escape the harsher climates of more northerly latitudes. Wildfowl (swans, geese and ducks) in particular, arrive in large numbers from October onwards and one Scottish hotspot is the Inner Hebridean island of Islay on the west coast of Scotland. 80 miles west of Glasgow, Islay is mild, wet and windy, making it an island oasis for two species of goose in particular, the Greenland barnacle goose Branta leucopsis and white-fronted Goose Anser albifrons flavirostris. 60% of the Greenland population of barnacle geese usually spend the winter on Islay making it a very important site for this population.
Photo by Jenny Tweedie (rspb-images.com)
RSPB Scotland is fortunate to own and manage 1,700ha at our Loch Gruinart nature reserve on Islay and this includes 1,000ha of the RAMSAR, SSSI and SPA designated site Gruinart Flats. We manage the site to provide safe roosting and foraging opportunities for the geese through water level management, rush topping and livestock grazing. But the geese have also benefitted from the actions of Dutch engineers from around 200 years ago. To reclaim the area currently known as Gruinart Flats from the sea, the engineers built a sea wall and installed rig and furrow drainage across the adjacent land to drain it for agricultural use. If only they knew the legacy of their work for these goose species!
For many years now, the sea wall has successfully prevented salty sea water from reaching the wet grasslands of Gruinart Flats which provides the ideal conditions that both the over-wintering geese and breeding waders need. However, in recent years many of the drainage features in the sea wall (sea gates, sluices and pipework) have been showing signs of their age. In combination with the threat of increasingly severe storms and sea level rises because of climate change it was decided that the sea wall was in need of an upgrade. So back in 2019 an upgrade that should protect Gruinart Flats from a 1 in 100-year flood event was designed.
The groundworks started in June 2021, and of course, the construction work needed to be completed before the return of the geese in October, so time was against the construction team! Despite a national concrete shortage, the full 2km of sea wall has now been successfully upgraded and the final stage of the project will be to fence off the new wall so the Flats can continue to be grazed for the benefit of nature. The Greenland Barnacle and White-fronted Geese have returned for another year and hopefully will be able to continue to do so year after year, even in the face of climate change.
Photo by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
The Loch Gruinart sea wall works described here have been part of the larger Co-operation Across Borders for Biodiversity project (CABB) funded by the European Regional Development Fund as part of the INTERREG VA Programme which is managed by the Special European Union Programmes Body. RSPB Northern Ireland (RSPB NI) is the lead partner in the CABB project and is working with RSPB Scotland, BirdWatch Ireland, Northern Ireland Water, Butterfly Conservation and Moors for the Future to improve conditions for wading birds, blanket and lowland raised bogs and associated species.
Main photo by James Duncan (rspb-images.com)