Wetland Restoration begins on Cooling Marshes

Alex Bates and I are super cheery about work beginning on Cooling Marsh

Landowner, Alex Bates has been dubbed the ‘hero of the week’ by KMFM after he has started to transform his land on the Hoo Peninsula into a wetland mecca for birds like lapwing and redshank.

When I first met Alex it was obvious his land, alongside the Thames had huge potential for wildlife. The vast open expanses should have been full of plummeting and bickering waders but the land was essentially dry throughout the spring meaning that it’s potential was lost every year.

Alex’s neighbours, the RSPB, were happy to help out and came up with a fabulous design which would allow water to be held on the land throughout the spring effectively turning back time and re-creating the landscape more closely aligned to that which the Romans and Britons would have known when they fought each other across these acres.

Consultants from Ecological Development and Research helped put together documents needed to get consent from Natural England and the Environment Agency for the work to begin.

Finally consent was granted. Alex and his partners could then set about investing in new diggers and dumpers and could finally get to work to restore the marsh.

As a hands on Man Alex is paying for and doing all the work himself with the assistance of homeless man who he met and offered a job to.

He certainly is a bit of a hero and I am looking forward to seeing how the site develops and how the birds react next spring. When I visited a flock of 50 lapwing were already beginning to investigate. It is wonderful to see these iconic birds back prospecting in fields they disappeared from 50 years ago.

In my role running the North Kent Breeding Wader Project I will be offering support and advice to Alex over the coming months and years.

Read the Article here https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/the-more-everybody-does-off-their-own-back-the-better-the-277665/

A day in the life of an environmental consultant – The video.

Instead of an update, this month you can join me for a day out on the marshes searching for lapwing chick as part of the North Kent Breeding Wader project

A Day in the Life of an Environmental Consultant- February 2019

Making the wetlands wetter.

Images like this from Google Earth help identify where to create new scrapes for wetland birds.

Despite, or more likely because of, a lack of rain over this winter and the beautiful but crazy heatwave at the end of February I am focussing my attention this year on plans to make the wet grassland of North Kent much wetter.

The Southeast struggles for sufficient rainfall and following the super dry summer of 2018 there is even more pressure on our rivers and wetlands as more water is abstracted from the natural environment for food production and the needs of the every increasing number of households.

Therefore we need to be able to preserve as much rainfall as we can on the marshes so they are wet enough in the spring to encourage waders to breed.

With this in mind I have spent the last month creating a series of wetland restoration plans alongside the farmers I work with. Google Earth has proved invaluable giving me a spy in the sky ability to whizz backwards in time across the land and see low lying spots where water naturally sits. By creating new rills and scrapes in these spots we can ensure that the fields stay wetter for longer into the spring and provide the conditions that lapwing and redshank need in order to successfully rear chicks.

Once farmers have approved the plans then the next step will be to get all the legal agreements in place to create a ‘ready to go’ project to present to outside funders.

It is a lot of work but is vital if we are to return waders to our marshes. To help I have taken on a student from Hadlow College. Matthew is in the first year of a Countryside Management degree with hopes of being an ecologist. I am delighted to welcome him to the team and help with his studies.

I am also delighted that the RSPB is looking to extend the work in North Kent for another 6 years and offer advice to even more farms. The Greater Thames Estuary is one of the priority areas in the RSPB’s Futurescapes project. Only by restoring large areas of land can we ensure a future for the UK’s wilWith this in mind I have begun reaching out to new landowners and was delighted to visit Kent Wildfowlers Cooling Marsh Reserve a few weeks ago.

This area is ideal for breeding waders as it lies adjacent to a large bay on the Thames which was created by managed realignment. The site is extremely open and flat but, like many other sites, struggles to hold water.

More wet rills are needed in places like Cooling Marsh

After walking the land with John Nottage and Ray Lucas from Kent Wildfowlers we sat around a pot bellied stove with dogs at our feet in a little hand built club house by the river and discussed ways we could help retain water on the marshes and improve the land for waders.

Many of the farmers I work with shoot and I don’t find this conflicts with managing the land for wading birds at all. I am very much hoping to get out to visit more Wildfowlers reserves and meet with more landowners next month.