Another exciting year has flown by here on the reserve with lots of hard work and achievements aplenty! We thought we would summarise these again via this blog with a few things to look forward to in the coming years as well.
Visitor Infrastructure
The year started off with the removal of the old Firth and Makepeace Hides which had been condemned by an external building surveyor, despite the hard work of the team to keep them going. Within a very short period we were able to complete the installation of the fantastic new Firth Lookout which has provided amazing views across the lake and close-up wildlife spectacles as well as protection from the worst of the weather too.
The plans for the replacement Makepeace Hide are well underway and following the extensive consultation, from which we received a lot of good comments and feedback, we are now speaking to hide designers to look at the specifications and provide some details so that we can go to the planning authorities.
Back in April and May, the team finally completed the Willow Trail boardwalk replacement after nearly 12 months of hard work and toil. At the end of the boardwalk we decided to create a new sheltered viewpoint which we named after one of our more influential and important wardens, Bert Axell MBE. This viewpoint has amazing views over a pool and towards the southern end of ARC. The boardwalk itself has been a real hotspot for dragonflies. To allow all of this work to happen, the team have cleared a lot of trees in the vicinity and this has also opened up some old newt ponds, within which a Great Crested Newt was recorded this spring - a great result!
Photo of Bert Axell Son and Wife at Axell Viewpoint
The team also expanded the old picnic spot at Dennis’s Hide, lowering the bank in front of the hide to reduce the impact of encroaching vegetation too. New benches were installed, replacing the old ones that had been up there for many years.
Following lots of good feedback about the outdoors meet and greet, we received our new Welcome Hut in the summer, this is located to the front of the visitor centre and has been a great way to reduce the pressure on visitor centre staff on busy days. This work coincided with the installation of new bike racks in the car park and we doubled the number of disabled parking bays to further improve this offer as well.
The team have undertaken a range of repairs to existing hides this summer and in early 2023 we will be having Gilleards back on site to undertake extensive repairs to the foundations of Dengemarsh Hide, replacing the roof at the same time. They will also be replacing the roof to Christmas Dell and the Viewing Screen at ARC to help prolong the life of these hides. This will cause some disruption, but we will be letting people know when we have dates and the levels of disruption to access this will cause.
In 2023 we will continue to progress with the replacement of Makepeace Hide. We are still trying to find funding for this, but delivery of the hide in 2023 is still being planned for. We will also be firming up plans for a new viewpoint in the location of the old hide and hope to be delivering this as well.
A real visitor highlight for the year and a good one to end this section was the reserve receiving its highest ever Visit England accreditation score. This is the benchmark which all visitor havens/attractions work towards each year. The high score is testament to the hard work the team have put in over the past couple of years to refresh and reinvigorate our visitor offer.
Another particular highlight has been the re-launch of our events programme. Our Visitor Experience Officer, Charlotte, has breathed fresh life into our old programme and we have welcomed over 3000 visitors on events this year alone!
Habitat Work
Lots of positive steps have been taken to breathe fresh life into the habitats on the reserve. Thanks to Fifth Continent Project funding we were able to undertake widespread willow clearance on the edges of New Excavations to open out the lake margins for floristic interest and at a similar time Affinity Water funding meant that we were able to clear sea buckthorn regrowth at ARC as well. The team removed a large quantity of willow from the reedbed at Dengemarsh which helped us to accommodate 4 booming bitterns and 4 pairs of marsh harrier this summer with young of both species indicating a successful year. We took on our most ambitious area of gorse coppicing yet to rejuvenate this habitat on the edges of New Excavations and promote fresh growth which will provide more shelter to invertebrates during the cold winter months.
Our raft at ARC suffered extensive damage during the winter storms of 80-90mph+ winds in February, so this was recovered to the lake edge for us to be able to undertake the repairs across the summer months. This included complete resurfacing and new timberwork across the whole raft. This has all been completed and will be re-launched in early spring, but in a new location close to the Viewing Screen to improve viewing opportunities on it.
The dry spring meant that our water pump was working overtime to keep the fields wet enough for our breeding waders - this work was successful with 3 fledged chicks from 4 nests, but we have been working on solutions to help keep these fields wetter with less input from the pump. This autumn we excavated about 2km of foot drains around the reserves; these are shallow 4ft wide depressions which will move water from the surrounding ditches into fields or will help to hold water in the fields. We have also temporarily dammed further ditches to hold water from escaping whilst we work on plans to repair sluices. This has left the fields looking really good heading into the winter and us hopeful for next year.
The dry spring led into a dry summer and the water levels dropped rapidly. Sadly, our common terns did not reappear in any numbers after the washout of summer 2021 where the rains hit just as chicks were born. Anecdotal evidence has indicated that weather related abandonment can cause them to not return the following year, but we are hopeful for next year. Our seabirds now have more choice than ever before with an additional 12 islands created across the reserve on ARC and Burrowes Pit. Thanks to funding from Affinity Water at ARC and Kent Ornithological Society, and private donors on Burrowes Pit, we were able to take advantage of the low water levels and raise the island heights up. This will mean that we are more resilient to the higher water levels that have become more common as climate change has progressed. The islands which have been created to the south of Burrowes Pit have been designed to be about 6m from the shore to create a close-up wildlife spectacle for visitors. Bringing wildlife closer to people is really important to us and with the old Makepeace Hide location, everything was within 60m-120m away on islands, meaning you had to have good optics to see the wildlife. This was a very common thing people would say to us - “everything is too far away” - so to be more accessible to more people, we wanted to bring that spectacle closer. Unfortunately the water in front of Makepeace Hide is at least 6m deep during low water periods, so island creation there was not possible. However, just to the right was an area much shallower, but still 60m+ away from the hide, so we took the decision to move the hide and create the islands here instead. We hope the wildlife will start to use these islands once the hide has been installed and disturbance is reduced.
Avian flu, which has decimated seabird populations around the country, also hit Dungeness and the quarantine period we were under meant that we had to delay our island clearance work on Burrowes Pit to maintain the safety of staff and volunteers. Our quarantine ended later in the autumn, by which point the weather had changed and the team were fighting water levels. Over 50% of the islands were cleared which is great going, especially considering an uptick in the quantities of willow growing out there which slows things down considerably. Further work has been delayed as the weather has turned colder and we need to reduce the levels of disturbance our wintering wildfowl face during these periods. It also allows the team to focus on maintaining the many other habitats around the reserve too.
Throughout this period, our fencing team have been working on maintaining the anti-predator fence around the hayfields and replacing/repairing stock fencing all over the reserve. We have a large programme of fencing replacement around the reserve which is not helped by the large bulls testing our fencing resilience or a car knocking down lengths of fencing. Fingers crossed in 2023, we can continue to replace this unhindered!
Works for 2023 on the habitats front include the progression of the project to get Boulderwall fields functioning as a successful wet grassland. This will include trying to raise water levels, the installation of scrapes, further foot drains and the creation of shallow islands on some of the lakes. We will be looking at developing projects to create fen around the margins of Dengemarsh and increasing the amount of reed within the reedbed there. We will be installing our anti-predator fences around the new island clusters on Burrowes Pit and ARC and we are hoping to be able to start some wider scale scrub clearance at ARC.
This is a great opportunity to thank all of our brilliant volunteers for their hard work, enthusiasm and commitment over the past 12 months. Without them, much of the above simply would not have happened.
With lots done in 2022 and with exciting things planned in 2023, we would like to wish all of our supporters and volunteers a very Happy New Year.