A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea

November 23, 2024 8:20 PM

A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea. The idea was to turn what had been farmland into salt marsh, an ancient ecosystem that soaks up water as the tide comes in and releases it as the sea retreats. The marsh acts as a natural and hugely effective bulwark against flooding, absorbing and slowing tides before they can encroach inland. Even last winter — the wettest anyone in the area could remember — the village at one edge of the peninsula did not flood. Paths through the marsh remained passable. A steep bank, covered with grass and significantly higher than the old flood wall, now borders the river.

The area is also a haven for wildlife. Bird-watching blinds with giant windows offer glimpses of godwits, plovers, oystercatchers, egrets and herons. A growing population of avocets — black-and-white wading birds with distinctive, curling beaks — has gathered around the pools of brackish water.

And the marsh has, over time, become a source of pride to the local population. Mr. Darch, who spent much of his career as a poultry farmer, started grazing cattle there in 2019, at the invitation of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

Steart is often described as a “rewilding” project, but Ms. Laver prefers not to use that term. The terrain has been returned to nature but it has been engineered by human ingenuity and curated by human hands.

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (6 comments total)

Robert MacFarlane also wrote about the importance of peat lands in the sequestration of carbon. The mistake in the 70s/80s was converting these “unproductive” lands into monoculture forests in an early, but very mistaken, attempt to sequester carbon. The problem was the forests sequestered less carbon and harbored predators not typical of the ecosystem. There’s since been a push to restore some of the peat lands.
posted by rubatan at 12:06 AM on November 24 [6 favorites]

Thanks for posting, interesting. I'm surprised that the conservationist describes marshland as not romantic. A lot of people have written about the pull of Romney Marsh and other liminal or flat landscapes.

I love the cow-collars which play music.
posted by paduasoy at 12:47 AM on November 24

"Musical collar" is certainly a more skilful marketing term than "shock collar".
posted by flabdablet at 1:37 AM on November 24

This is encouraging in a very discouraging time, thank you for posting!
posted by newpotato at 5:07 AM on November 24 [1 favorite]

Louisiana has conducted over 7,000 acres of restoration, although the program is threatened by the recent breaks with reality that are happening.

we often have to bring sand and sediment in, rather than take it away, but some of the river reintroductions have been controversial with fishers in the way that re-grading has irked farmers in this piece
posted by eustatic at 6:55 AM on November 24 [2 favorites]

Out in California we have also been restoring tidal marsh for many years. We diked and drained our marshes for farmland, and the peat soils oxidized, releasing loads of carbon and causing the land to subside. Now, to restore marsh, we need to raise the grade by adding sediment. The solution is to re-use dredge sediment from shipping channel and harbor dredging.
https://montezumawetlands.com/
https://sfbaynerr.sfsu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/cullinan-ranch-Craig-Garner.pdf (PDF link)
posted by agentofselection at 2:50 PM on November 24 [4 favorites]