Time Tunnel

We travel back to... What was happening globally in 2012:

2012

...to give you a glimpse of our past and see what was happening at the Trust. Essex Wildlife Trust’s Winter 2012 magazine featured a 10 year review of the Trust’s pioneering managed realignment project,

breaching the sea

wall at Abbotts Hall.

Once more unto the breach

It was four centuries ago that the earth moved for Abbotts Hall Farm, when pioneering landowners began constructing the sea defences that excluded the sea and reclaimed the low lying parts of Abbotts Hall from saltmarsh and mudflat.

That reclaimed land became rich grass and supported sheep farming until the 1940s, when it was ploughed to produce arable crops.

Then, thanks to the legacy of Joan Elliot, along came Essex Wildlife Trust to this beautiful corner of the county; Abbotts Hall Farm was to change yet again.

The Trust’s project was simple, even if exercising it was not, and was two years in the planning: to breach the sea wall, to allow saltwater back on the reclaimed land and to allow for the regeneration of saltmarsh and mudflat.

Ten years on and nature has flourished. The incoming tides from the Salcott Channel – which leads into the vast Blackwater Estuary – have brought in seeds from the established saltmarsh outside the sea wall. Venturing on to that area today the familiar elements of saltmarsh are all present, from the succulent marsh samphire, which flanks the drainage channels, to shrubby seablite clumps on the higher ridges.

The new mudflats have developed a rich invertebrate fauna and in winter support many species of wader, including grey plover, dunlin and black-tailed godwit. The channels and pools are home to small fish, prawns and shrimps, to the delight of little egrets and kingfishers. It is perhaps the gentle slope from mudflat and lagoon through the saltmarsh to the coastal grassland that is the defining success of the scheme to date. It has meant that there no longer needs to be a man-made sea wall; it has allowed the natural graduation from saline to terrestrial habitats that is all but absent on our county’s low lying engineered coastline. It is a place where sea purslane mingles with terrestrial grasses. This ‘transitional’ zone is where brown hares hide by day and graze by night, barn owls hunt and where skylarks and redshanks nest among the tussocks.

At around 50 hectares, the ‘new’ intertidal habitats are a demonstration of a truly wild place.

• The end of the Mayan calendar, or the end of the world as some believed, was observed without consequence. • Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her

Diamond Jubilee. • The UK hosted its third Olympic Games in London. • Two studies in Science revealed that neonicotinoids, which were introduced in the 1990s, were resulting in the collapse of bee hives. • The world population reached 7.086 billion while the population of the

United Kingdom was 63.7 million.

Saltmarsh at Abbotts Hall - Charlie Oliver

Discover how the site has continued to develop over the following decade on pages 34 as we celebrate the project’s 20 year anniversary.