Essex Grazing Marsh Restoration Project

This project will deliver habitat restoration across two key SSSI coastal grazing marsh sites on the Essex coast, Tollesbury Wick (204ha) on the Blackwater Estuary and Blue House Farm (275ha) on the Crouch estuary.
At present both project sites are too dry as insufficient water is held on the land and there is a lack of diversity and micro topography to support breeding wading bird species, particularly, Lapwing and Redshank. Furthermore, the lack of water on these sites limits their usage by waders and wildfowl during the winter and their potential for supporting expanded water vole populations and aquatic invertebrate assemblages.
Overall, across the two sites the project will restore/create
184.68ha of coastal grazing marsh
1.00 ha of reedbed
4.76 ha of open water and 0.16ha scrape
11,700 m of ditches