BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK

Subject: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 07:30 AM

A new Wetland area is being created today at Wallasey Island, Essex. See the news report here.

Bulldozers are even now, taking out the last bits of the sea wall so that the next tide can spread further in and create a "new" salt marsh habitat that will improve the lot of wild creatures and the sea defences for the local inhabitants.

Good luck to 'em, that's what I say. Salt marshes are rarer than rain forest.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 07:49 AM

Sounds good Liz. There are salt marshes not too far from me btw - Salthouse/Cley area of N Norfolk.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 07:55 AM

To those of you who don't know this area, think Holland. Large sections of this coast were reclaimed from the sea by Dutch engineers. The sea walls are huge, and mainly protect cereal crops, which are not too rare in East Anglia....

Now, will this idea be taken up and used a bit more widely? It's certainly cheaper and better for wildlife than the current sea walls

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 07:59 AM

Three cheers for common sense. Good to see another project where we work WITH Nature rather than agin. Not that far from where I live, think I'll give it a visit.
                Nigel P. :)

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 08:21 AM

Maybe if the sea has a natural means of dissipating the force of the tides here, then it will spend less time eroding the coasts elsewhere!
Great news.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 09:01 AM

The original managed retreat was created in the early 90's in Tollesbury (also in Essex), and it has taken ages for the prairie the original sea wall protected to form any sort of creeks or channels, and is still for the large part a flat muddy expanse with dead trees dotted about. It is obviously being closely studied for the reemergence of flora and fauna, but it has had an ill-considered drawback. Because the twenty acre site is a heck of a reservoir, the falling tide has scoured the North Channel, and silted the South Channel accordingly. All the water commerce uses the South Channel, which feeds the marina, as well as the fisherman's hard. This map shows the channels, but the managed retreat isn't shown yet (it is at the western end of the map area).

At the seaward end of South Channel, by what is known locally as the Shram Hill, low water springs gave at least ten feet of depth, and now it is barely covered. There has been massive coastal engineering going on at the same time, with thousands of tonnes of ballast dredged from Harwich Harbour deposited on the seaward end of the north bank of the River Blackwater, designed to control wave action from north easterly gales before they hit the crumbling sea walls that in this case protect an internationally important bird reserve (although Bunnahabhain has a valid point about barley barons!).

Thanks, Lizzie, for drawing my attention to this, as I was characteristically clueless.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 09:01 AM

I just hope that they've really thought this one out and aren't just going to shift tons of beach further along the coast - don't laugh, it's happened! Some council decided to enhance the look of their sandy beach by taking out the groynes (sort of like fences down the beach) so they had a nice clear beach. After the next high tide, their beach was 3 miles down the coast.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 09:25 AM

Cross posted there... looks like someone actually thought it through!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 09:31 AM

Best of luck to all involved in it. Great to see it created.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 04 Jul 06 - 09:44 AM

Nice to see Joyce's Head get a mention there Skip!
G.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Bert
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 01:11 AM

I thought Essex already was a wetland.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 03:55 AM

Essex is comparitively dry compared to the rest of Britain.... for a true 'wetland' (in the sense I suspect you mean), you need to try Norfolk or Cambridgeshire.... not for nothing should you count their toes.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: The Barden of England
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 04:26 AM

Oi Liz!!! I was born is Wisbech and have the correct number of fingers and toes, or did until we went decimal!!!
John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 04:31 AM

Yes, but should they be joined together like that?!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: The Barden of England
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 05:54 AM

The Simpson can't be wrong can they???

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Mr Fox
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 10:18 AM

Kind of related news:

http://www.wwt.org.uk/visit/wetlandcentre/news.asp

Avocets nesting in London!

I'm a swampy myself, btw, though from south of the Thames. I was born in Woolwich and I used to live on the Isle of Sheppy - but that was too weird even for me so I moved to Gillingham where there are fewer toes per person.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 11:29 AM

Sheppey contains Queenborough where we used to clear customs on our way back up the Thames from jaunts to Calais. It was known among the boating fraternity in those days as, The Arsehole of the Empire. Don't expect it's improved.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Mr Fox
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 12:43 PM

Giok

Queenborough is just about the classiest place on Sheppey (and no, it hasn't improved one iota).

Just down the road is Rushenden, a weird place of strange pale creatures that only come out at night and all look exactly the same. It's fenced on two sides by the Swale, a third by an industrial estate and the fourth by a sewage farm. The sewage complained about the smell.

'The League of Gentlemen' is considered comedy in most parts of Britain. On Sheppey, it's documentary.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 04:04 PM

Mr Fox, true the Isle of Sheppey is strange (I am the other side of the Medway near the Isle of Grain) but the usual reason for the number of appendages in Gillingham not matching those from elsewhere is that a wall boy broke or cut those of an innocent bystander off.

I'd rather walk the Isle of Sheppey than Gillingham High Street (or Priestfields, or the north end of Canterbury Street) after midnight.

My side of the water has of course Lower Coke (I am told its real name is) and one of the drug and gem smuggling capitals of the UK, Allhallows - and a substantial "stopper" population who can get lively after drink taken (or other stimulant taken come to that).

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 04:09 PM

Essex has, not very far form the new wetland, Foulness. It is a name and descriptiomn at the same time.....

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 05:55 PM

If you'll indulge me, this is what the former vicar of East Mersea had to say about the place:-

BETWEEN the mouths of the Blackwater and the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in every part with water. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of Sargasso weed floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions. The creeks, some of considerable length and breadth, extend many miles inland, and are arteries whence branches out a fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noontides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea asserts its royalty over this vast region, and overflows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser islet, called the Ray. This latter is a hill of gravel rising from the heart of the marshes, crowned with ancient thorntrees, and possessing, what is denied the mainland, an unfailing spring of purest water. At ebb, the Ray can only be reached from the old Roman causeway, called the Strood, over which runs the road from Colchester to Mersea Isle, connecting formerly the city of the Trinobantes with the station of the count of the Saxon shore. But even at ebb, the Ray is not approachable by land unless the sun or east wind has parched the ooze into brick; and then the way is long, tedious and tortuous, among bitter pools and over shining creeks. It was perhaps because this ridge of high ground was so inaccessible, so well protected by nature, that the ancient inhabitants had erected on it a rath, or fortified camp of wooden logs, which left its name to the place long after the timber defences had rotted away.

A more desolate region can scarce be conceived, and yet it is not without beauty. In summer, the thrift mantles the marches with shot satin, passing through all gradations of tint from maiden's blush to lily white. Thereafter a purple glow steals over the waste, as the sea lavender bursts into flower, and simultaneously every creek and pool is royally fringed with sea aster. A little later the glasswort, that shot up green and transparent as emerald glass in the early spring, turns to every tinge of carmine.

When all vegetation ceases to live, and goes to sleep, the marshes are alive and wakeful with countless wild fowl. At all times they are haunted with sea mews and roysten crows; in winter they teem with wild duck and grey geese. The stately heron loves to wade in the pools, occasionally the whooper swan sounds his loud trumpet, and flashes a white reflection in the still blue waters of the fleets. The plaintive pipe of the curlew is familiar to those who frequent these marshes, and the barking of the brent geese as they return from their northern breeding places is heard in November.

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 05 Jul 06 - 06:22 PM

Pure poetry mate, pure poetry.
Thanks
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: Crystal
Date: 06 Jul 06 - 11:25 AM

This makes me homesick! Aberdeen has sandy beaches sure, but I prefer Mudflats!

Subject: RE: BS: New Wetland habitat created, Essex, UK
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 06 Jul 06 - 01:53 PM

Only time can 'create' saltmarshes. I suspect that once they have been destroyed - oh, sorry -'reclaimed' - they will take many centuries to regenerate.

Although this project is better than what went before (or possibly it's purely pragmatic as some bunch of politicians/ bureaucrats, somewhere, have finally grasped what will really happen when sea levels start to rise) it still smacks of arrogance - "we know what's best for nature and we can engineer whatever habitsts we like just where we want them". This attitude was always bollocks and it's bollocks now!