Sea-change riches

The North Sea washes up on some of the lowest-lying coastlines around the world. The standard response to protect land from its ravages has been to build solid dykes between land and sea. And many parts of the Netherlands have been more ambitiously reclaimed from the North Sea by such means. But, in the face of climate change and rising sea levels, researchers have been thinking about other mechanisms. And they have been looking back at the properties of natural saltmarshes and mudflats to absorb storm water and lessen the power of tidal forces. And these come with an additional benefit: a major wildlife habitat to boot. The largest wildlife charity in Europe, Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), is to harness rising sea levels to create one of Europe's largest coastal wetlands and help wildlife adapt to climate change. Tidal waters will turn most of Wallasea Island, 60 km east of London, into saltmarsh, creeks and mudflats, creating a new habitat for wildlife. Of 30,000 hectares of intertidal saltmarsh that surrounded this Essex region of coast 400 years ago, only 2,500 hectares remain, and 10 hectares have been destroyed across England each year. This rate of loss is expected to accelerate with climate change, as rising sea levels and more severe storms increasingly erode them if isolated from ground inland. The loss of saltmarsh could make North Sea coastal areas more vulnerable to the effects of global warming, as they help to buffer the effects of high and storm tides. The RSPB's new £12 million scheme will be the charity's most expensive and ambitious project and it is hoped it could attract new species to the country, including spoonbills, which have not nested in Britain for more than 400 years. Small numbers now breed across the North Sea in the Netherlands but these have become a now mostly exotic species. Kentish plovers, absent for 50 years, and black-winged stilts, which have only bred in Britain three times, are among the birds the RSPB are hoping will find the new reserve Feature Softer, staged defences against rising sea levels are winning converts with major wildlife advantages too. Nigel Williams reports on the latest project to be launched in the North Sea. attractive. Otters, saltwater fish and seawater plants are also expected to become established. The RSPB is encouraged in its plans by the success of two earlier …