We are delighted to announce that thanks to funding from Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme (SRP) we will be undertaking an ecological uplift of New Excavations at RSPB Dungeness.
New Excavations is at the heart of the reserve with our popular visitor trail circling it and overlooked by Christmas Dell hide. It is a series of deep lakes (over 13m in places), covering over 22ha with shallow, reedy causeways criss-crossing the lake. A few of these causeways are always exposed and help to protect an area of lake margin, home to some of our rarest sand species. The lake margins themselves are home to marshmallow, food plant of the rare marshmallow moth which, thanks to the effort of our volunteers, is now known to be present on site as well as the rare medicinal leech, which thrives in the shallower, warmer margins.
These lakes can be disappointing for birdlife with little or no opportunities for shallow feeding or roosting due to the climate change induced increase in water levels inundating much of the shallower habitat for longer periods, sometimes all year. The margins of the lake have gradually been encroached by willow, shading out areas ideal for marshmallow colonisation and medicinal leech despite the best efforts of the team. The important sand margins of the lake are gradually washing out due to inundation of the habitat with extreme weather causing higher water levels in recent years.
Figure 1: an aerial view of New Excavations as it currently looks
Our ambition
The plan
Between Autumn 2023 and March 2025 a series of works will be undertaken to improve the habitat for the wildlife using the lake and subsequently all our visitors too.
Figure 2: An overview of the project. Islands are referenced in the text below.
Work starts in late October 2023 with modifications to the northern bank and lake edge to enable machinery to access the lake in the subsequent summer. We will also work to infill a causeway to the southern end of the lake to help the team with access as well as removing vegetation from islands 1 and 4 and then breaking these causeways at the landward edge to create an island. Work will also start on clearing as much willow as possible from the margins of the lake, some with machinery and some by the reserve team here to create the opportunities for the marshmallow and the medicinal leech. We will take delivery of sand from a nearby quarry which we will use to top up the sand habitat and ensure some areas are always above peak water levels for these species that thrive in this habitat.
Work will then pause before restarting in late summer 2024 when the bulk of the island creation is undertaken. The islands will be created in a similar fashion to those on the Re-tern project in 2017 via a pontoon mounted excavator being moved around the lake via boat. Material for the islands will be “won” from the surrounding shallower habitat and the islands will be raised to heights where most should be out of the water for most of the year. These islands will be far bigger than any of the others on the reserve and we will be looking to undertake a range of annual management techniques to keep them in condition for a range of gulls and terns. Work is expected to take 10 weeks.
The delivery phase of the project ends with the construction and deployment of seabird rafts on New Excavations close to our newly revamped Christmas Dell Hide in the spring of 2025 and a further floating fences which have proven successful this year.
There will evidently be some disturbance to wildlife during these project works, but we will continue to update all our visitors as much as we can as works progress.
Ongoing works will control the scrub along the lake margins, and marshmallow planting will happen once the scrub is removed accompanied by habitat and species monitoring to assess the success of the projects.
This exciting project will deliver increasingly important seabird breeding habitat at a time when they are under extreme pressure from multiple angles including climate change, habitat loss and avian influenza amongst others. It will also mean that in the past 6 years, the reserve team will have created 72 islands for the benefit of seabirds, waders and wildfowl with some good success. It will also help to conserve some of the UK’s rarest species and priority conservation species. Not only this, but it will help with our programme of breathing fresh life in the RSPB’s oldest existing reserve and continue to attract visitors from across the UK and Europe to enjoy one of the most amazing wildlife reserves in the country.
For more information on the project please email the team on dungeness@rspb.org.uk
Further information on the Species Recovery Programme can be found here: Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme awards - Natural England (blog.gov.uk)