The RSPB’s Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project is likely to go ahead after an agreement has been reached between the RSPB and Crossrail to use material excavated while digging the cross-London rail link to create the huge wildlife reserve.

Subject to a planning application made by the RSPB to Essex County Council, the project will create 150 hectares of mudflats, 190 hectares of saltmarsh, 75 hectares of shallow saltwater lagoons, and an additional raised area of saltmarsh in anticipation of future sea level rises. About eight miles of coastal walks and cycle routes will also be created as part of the scheme.

The saltmarshes, and mudflats will attract rare coastal birds such as spoonbills and black winged stilts, and potentially even Kentish plovers not seen in the UK for over 50 years.

Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB, is quoted by Wildlife Extra:
“This is a fantastic agreement that one year ago, we could never have imagined. Wallasea will be the RSPB’s most ambitious and innovative habitat recreation scheme. It will create a huge new area for birds and other wildlife whose existing habitats are being damaged and lost because of climate change. This is a ground-breaking deal between one of the UK’s leading enterprises and an environmental charity. It is absolutely wonderful news for wildlife.”

Crossrail main works should begin in 2010, with tunnel boring starting in 2011. The RSPB’s work on Wallasea is expected to take between five and ten years.

Source: Wildlife Extra

Up to 400 bird watchers headed for the Berry Head nature reserve in Brixham this week to see the very rare Sardinian warbler. The bird, blown off course while heading back to the Mediterranean for the winter, is thought to be a female. The bird’s call is distinctive, fast and rattling.
Park manager Nigel Smallbones, of the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust, is quoted by This is South Devon website: “It has created a lot of interest. This is only the third or fourth sighting ever on the UK mainland, although they have been spotted occasionally on the Scilly Isles. It may have been brought here unexpectedly by prevailing winds. There were hundreds of people here at the weekend, trying to catch a glimpse and take pictures.”

The Sardinian warbler birds are visitors to the Mediterranean, but are also common in Turkey and Northern Asia.

Source: This is South Devon

Kent Wildlife Trust’s first official Kent Seasearch dive survey of the year has discovered a seahorse close to Dover Harbour.

Two volunteer divers found the animal in Shakespeare Bay, southwest of the harbour, in a depth of about 15 metres. Video taken by the divers of the three-inch long animal confirmed it to be a short-snouted seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus), the same as that reported in the Thames Estuary last month.

Seasearch diver and Marine Officer for Kent Wildlife Trust, Bryony Chapman, said: “We have had very occasional reports of seahorses washed up around the Kent coast, but we believe this is the first sighting and the first film of these elusive creatures in their natural environment in this area, so the team is very excited.”

The find follows a recent announcement that short-snouted and spiny seahorses are being given special protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. There is so little information about these animals that it is not clear how endangered they may be.

Kent Seasearch is run by Kent Wildlife Trust and is part of a national Seasearch programme for volunteer divers to help protect marine wildlife by recording information about habitats and species on their dives. This information will help those responsible for marine nature conservation to develop strategies which protect the UK’s marine wildlife.