Editor: Last year Robert Coleman of Titchwell Marsh presented the RSPB’s adaptation to coastal erosion at this reserve. At that stage one aspect of the project was incomplete – the development of a new reedbed habitat. Now we can finish the story with an overview of this reedbed’s creation. Of course the creation of new reedbeds is not news, what is news here is the positive nature of the thinking that led to its development. Hopefully, this will serve to encourage Suffolk’s coastal reserves’ managements to be equally visionary when the time comes again for them to create further replacement habitat too.
hole in the southern edge of the reserve, they decided to turn this potential negative into a positive and create a new reedbed. Today Patsy’s Reedbed testifies to that decisive thinking – a two and a half hectare mere of water plus scrub margins, fed by springs to form the new and accessible southern border of Titchwell Marsh. The £1.4 million pound Titchwell Coastal Change Project had demanded the re-building of the freshwater marsh’s north seawall (now known as the Parrinder Bank) as well as strengthening the West Bank to protect both from the encroaching sea when the Brackish Marsh was breached. The rebuilding of these banks would require considerable quantities of clay to reinforce their foundations.
Phil Brown with Paul Eele, RSPB Reserve Warden
Turning a deficit into an asset A new reedbed for Titchwell Marsh In 2009, when Robert Coleman and his site management team were faced with a gaping
A novel traffic-reduction measure In order to reduce the numbers of lorries using the busy A149 coast road transporting the vast quantities of material the project required to strengthen the banks, it was hoped instead that the necessary material could be mined on site. Once the landscape company’s engineers had confirmed that the proposed source material would be fit for purpose, approval was given to extract tonnes of clay from beneath the grassland to the south of the present reedbeds. This did not constitute a loss to wildlife as the grassland found above the clay was of low biodiversity value.
West Bank path Saltmarsh
Wet grazing meadow (private)
Freshwater marsh
Island Hide
Freshwater reeds Willow carr
Fen Hide
Wet grazing meadow
Map: © Crown copyright. All rights reserved. RSPB licence 100021787.
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THE HARRIER – October 2012
