Our Wetland Heritage: An Integrated Approach Towards Managing Coastal Landscapes

Coastal landscapes are contested places where human communities and natural forces regularly come into conflict. The reclaimed wetlands that fringe so many of our major estuaries are particularly threatened as they almost invariably provide large areas of flat land close to major urban, industrial and transport developments associated with the sheltered waters that these locations afford. The rich alluvial soils also make for fertile agricultural land that, with modern drainage techniques and agricultural intensification, has in many areas led to rich wetland habitats being replaced with arable praries. In many locations, rising sea levels are posing another threat as erosion is forcing the Environment Agency to decide whether to pump increasing resources into maintaining existing flood defences, or to adopt a more flexible approach by breaching sea walls in order to create new mudflats and allowing saltmarsh to regenerate, so acting as 'soft' flood defence (in contrast to the present concrete and stone clad 'hard defences'). Such managed re-alignment poses a threat to the rich cultural heritage of our coastal wetlands both in terms of the historic landscape - the present patterns of fields, roads, settlements and flood defences that make up today's countryside - and the buried archaeology that permanently high water tables have ensured are exceptionally well preserved. There is, however, one further way in which our coastal wetlands are a contested landscape: the sometimes conflicting objectives of different conservation bodies. As important natural habitats are lost, for example through major infrastructure developments, it is common practice, and indeed often a legal requirement under the European Union Habitats Directive, for nature conservation bodies to create equivalent or alternative environments nearby as a form of compensation. For example, when the Cardiff Bay Barrage was created, large lagoons were dug on the Gwent Levels to create alternative bird feeding grounds which led to a large area of medieval landscape being destroyed. With similar schemes proposed around the country there is a desperate need for heritage and conservation bodies to work more closely together; firstly in understanding the historical processes that have led to the creation of the present historic landscape, secondly in establishing what key character defining features of a wetland landscape it is most important to preserve, and thirdly how nature conservation enhancements can best be accommodated within these landscapes. This project will use the techniques of historic landscape analysis developed by the applicant, Professor Stephen Rippon, to inform the future management across the coastal wetlands of southern Essex including the South Essex Marshes Nature Reserve (expected to receive 350,000 visitors annually) that falls within the Thames Gateway development - western Europe's largest regeneration intiative. The project will work in partnership with the Historic Environment Service of Essex County Council and RSPB to produce five key outputs: a report, that will have both immediate and lasting value, informing future management of these landscapes; a series of seminars to facilitate discussion between the various interested parties including the Environment Agency and Natural England; a booklet, travelling exhibition and public meeting aimed at local communities; a 'toolkit' designed to explain the methodologies used in these case-studies in such a way that others can carry out similar work elsewhere; and a paper to be published in an international peer reviewed journal - Landscape Research - will disseminate the results of the project to a wider professional audience.