Hi all,
Lots of you are heading for the BirdFair at Rutland Water over the next couple of days. While you're there (and especially if you've been going there for years) you can hardly fail to notice a massive amount of new habitat creation work going on. I thought I'd take the chance to highlight the role the RSPB has played (and continues to play) in this, because it'll be unknown to most of you and was a big part of my professional life from 2000 (when I started with the RSPB) to 2006.
The reason for all this new work is because (a) Rutland Water is protected under the European Birds Directive as a 'Special Protection Area' and (b) because way back in 1998 Anglian Water decided they needed to abstract more water from the reservoir for their customers up and down Eastern England.
This increased abstraction (about 30% more than currently) would affect water levels in the main part of the reservoir, with possible impacts on all levels of the ecology from aquatic plants to invertebrates, fish fry, small fish and ultimately the huge numbers of wintering water birds for which the reservoir is protected.
As planning officer for the RSPB in the Midlands I got involved in several years' worth of negotiations with Anglian Water, Natural England, the Wildlife Trust (who manage the nature reserve there) and the planning authority. It took about 3 years, lots of objection letter, lots of scientific studies and hours and hours of meetings to agree that Anglian Water's proposal would probably have a significant effect on the existing birdlife, and another 3-4 years of this before everyone was happy that those effects had been accurately measured, and to agree a range of measures to mitigate and compensate for the impacts.
To put it in simple numbers, Rutland Water hosts about 24,000 water birds in winter. The predictions were that about half (12,000) would be lost if the proposals went ahead without any mitigation or compensation. Anglian Water's proposals for mitigation (including securing the water supply to the three lagoons managed by the Wildlife Trust) would have held onto about 6,000 of those 'lost' birds, leaving 6,000 with nowhere to go. And this is why these new lagoons are being built - to provide enough extra habitat next to the protected site for 6,000 birds.
The nice footnote to all this is that in 2010, our massive 'rotary ditcher' is being hired out to Anglian Water to put in place a series of shallow wet features on areas of dry, improved grassland around the reservoir, as part of the mitigation work to provide extra habitats for birds like wigeons and teals.
Enjoy the BirdFair - may see some of you tomorrow on the RSPB main stand!
Colin
Hi Colin
Great information about Rutland much of it I never knew at all - so thanks for informing us here
Yes, we will visit the RSPB stand and have a couple of arrangements to meet/see people elsewhere in the area too so we will try to see everyone we can now. We have worked out where the RSPB stand is in advance.
We will make a day of it and arrive early in the morning and hope the weather remains as good as it should do.
Regards
Kathy and Dave