Photo: Steve Aylward
Matt Gaw
Carlton Marshes Carlton Marshes is at the heart of Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s vision to create 1,000 acres of wildness at the southern gateway to the Broads National Park. Matt Gaw visits to learn about how the changes will benefit people and wildlife. The truck pitches and rolls like a boat on high seas as Matt Gooch, Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Broads Warden, drives across sedge and tussocks of rough grass. He slows and points. More Snipe than I have ever seen bounce into the air with startled bleats: smudges of mottled brown against a ginclear sky. Lapwing follow, wavering up before flopping down like helicoptering sycamore seeds. Since this small, shallow pool at Carlton Marshes was clawed out of the mud a few years ago, 191 bird species have been spotted rootling in its murky waters. Purple
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Heron, Black-tailed Godwit, Great White Egret, Avocet, Glossy Ibis, Shorelark, Redthroated Diver and Spoonbill, have all been recorded here. Just two miles from the heaving North Sea, the whole reserve is located on a natural flyway, a stopping point for the salt-soaked and the exhausted; the wing-sore and hungry. For Matt this pool, or scrape, is a small example of how quick water is to rewild. He turns the truck’s engine off and passes me binoculars. “Just imagine,” he says, “what it’s going to be like when this place is surrounded by even more wetland, when there are dozens of scrapes like this across 1,000 acres, rather than two or three across 400.” It’s an inspiring thought. For the past 18 months Suffolk Wildlife Trust has been campaigning hard to buy a 186 acre parcel
