RSPB Reserves - community pagesNow you can join our friendly RSPB Reserve communities. Not only can you read all the latest on our local reserves but you can also have fun sharing your experiences, showing off your photos and getting in touch with other people. Read the latest news and Tweetss and join the forums to have your say on the following community reserve pages: RSPB South Essex Marshes Home Page (includes Vange Marsh and West Canvey Marsh): http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/southessexmarshes/default.aspx See Map for Vange Marsh. See Map for West Canvey Marsh. See Map RSPB Old Hall Marshes: See update page. Subscribe to South Essex Marshes RSS feed. Subscribe to Wallasea Island Island RSS feed. South Essex Reserves We also plan to open up the blocked sluice that created the lake, to allow the creation of a 1ha bunded saline lagoon habitat with islands. The works proposed will also benefit a range of other wildlife - not just birds and this will allow us to provide a site that is usable by as many birds as possible. In the longer term we plan to have a footpath connecting the site to Wat Tyler Country, via a bridge over Pitsea Creek. Vange Marsh North has been a good site intermittently in the past. Our plans will ensure that it is consistently managed for the years to come, allowing the development of a sustainable wetland wildlife community. At the same time as acquiring Vange Marsh North, we also acquired 93ha (230 acres) at Vange Wick Marshes. Plans are at an advanced stage to re-wet these marshes and manage them for a similar range of birds and other wildlife. West Canvey Marshes: We acquired2 this 254ha site, from Morrison's Supermarkets, on 30th March 2006. Progress to-date has concentrated on site investigation, including a full ground survey and a range of ecological surveys. Habitat management and people engagement proposals will be out for extensive consultation in the near future. We have a visitor centre at Wat Tyler Country Park where you can visit us for more infomation and find out how to join the RSPB. Wallasea Island
The RSPB started talking to the major landowner on Wallasea Island in 2000, leading eventually to the RSPB signing a 2-year option to buy 738ha of land on the Island in 2007. The two-year period was to allow a scheme to be devised, consents to be obtained and funding secured on what is a multi-million pound project the largest so far attempted by the RSPB in the UK. The RSPB plans to acquire the first portion of land on the island in September 2009. Project development costs are in excess of £750k to develop a socially and environmentally acceptable design and obtain the necessary consents. Hydrodynamic studies have shown that the sustainable capacity for water flow onto/off the island per tide is around 3 million m3. An unmanaged breach would allow 11 million m3 of water onto the island. We plan to import 7.5 million m3 of inert fill by sea from Crossrail and others, the placement of this fill will raise the land level to reduce the capacity of the island to a designed level of two million m3. The imported fill will be placed to produce the ground heights required for the range of habitats mudflat, saltmarsh, saline lagoon and brackish marsh/pasture. Six 100m wide seawall breaches will be created to allow the free flow on/off the inter-tidal habitats. The site will be built up in cells each with own sea defences. In due course visitor facilities, including five bird hides, two car parks and15km new paths will be added. The Wallasea Wild Coast project is our most ambitious plan so far to restore lost coastal wetlands on a huge scale an area 2 ½ times the size of the City of London. |
Page last updated:
Web Design Graham Mee. © Copyright of all pages South East Essex RSPB Local Group. All images copyright of owners
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Registered charity no 207076
Please read our privacy and visitor policy