The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Can anyone 'in-the-know' explain what exactly is going to happen at Donna Nook please with regard to the planned managed realignment?

Cheers

Steve

I was really hoping someone would reply to Steve on this. This scheme was reported by the Grimsby Telegraph as a potentially massive piece of habitat creation on one of our best bits of coast. Is what's happening a secret or does nobody actually know?

Bill

A good place to start would be here: work due to start mid 2009:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/commondata/acrobat/1427_1150696.pdf

get your self in the crown and anchor pub [tetney lock] the fowling lads who shoot the area. land and marsh should give you some info ! i have heard its gonna be between pyes hall up to somewere to black hut [grainthorpe haven] but talking to rspb warden other week was telling me goverment are now saying sea levells are not rising as much as previously thought. so who knows

If you google 'donna nook realignment scheme' you get limited info mainly from the environment agency.It appears the scheme won't be as large as Alkborough (138ha as opposed to 170ha).
Last year I spoke to some workmen involved in the scheme who said, at Pyes Hall the realignment would be back as far as the trees in the distance, so quite a huge retreat. Looks as though the trees and hedge at Pyes Hall will be lost through drowning unless something is done to protect them. I believe the scheme is supposed to be completed by 2011.
It would be useful to have more info.
Geoff

just the thoughts of myself and byron concerning the re-alignment.
it,s not that long ago, that the new seawall, stretching from tetney haven and out through the saltmarsh past the old rspb hut ( now gone ) and returning to join the old seawall at north corner ,bordering the old raf base,north coates, was built, the sea had free access to this large area of land but it was reclaimed,the actual land now has 2 seawalls, an inner and an outer.when you travel along this part of the coast as we often do,and you can walk round it as a loop,returning to tetney haven, it seems to make sense that by just breaching an existing wall ,you have got your instant re-alignment.we also fail to see ,that if the breach is at pye,s hall, how is the water gonna get into it? 90% of the year you can walk out to the seal colony,( dodging the a10,s ) and most of this area, in about 6 inches of water.

gaudeamus igitur.

you seem to have missed a vital point re North Cotes--a very rich farmer owns that land which he stole from the saltmarsh (probably with a large government grant) and he would no no doubt want to charge EA the price of prime building land to have it back; this is the same poor farmer who get a licence to allow cowboys to shoot Brent Geese to stop them damaging his huge profits on winter wheat---

Thanks to everyone for those answers. Perhaps it wouldn't actually matter if the new area at Donna Nook was almost always dry, as long as it fulfilled its purpose and allowed seawater onto it in the event of extremely high tides. Higher (so mostly dry) saltmarsh, brackish grazing marsh and 'washland' provide fantastic habitat for birds in other places, even when almost always dry or subject to only occasional flooding. I suspect that if floods were sufficiently infrequent, rough grassland would result, and periodic wipe-outs from floods would lead to boom and bust cycles in small mammal populations, resulting in large numbers of raptors being supported when numbers peaked. Could be good?!!

I agree the enclosed area at Tetney seems tailor-made for managed realignment - is this land more expensive to buy than that at Donna Nook? Is it actually better farmland, are there hydrological reasons that make it unsuitable, or is it just a particularly greedy farmer?

Bill

maybe compulsary purchace!

As i understand it the reclamation fields at Tetney are not owned by the farmer but a college/s investment group ( who own a lot of other land inc saltmarsh ) and leased to him, thus this land would be too expensive and is probably why Pyes/Grainthorpe has been chosen, where, my spies tell me, the sale of 250 acres has been completed.

_________________
Regards, DJB. http://bradderscleebirding.blogspot.co.uk/

hmm.! bradders. ! spies in the camp !
tell us more .
we have vays of making you talk !

_________________
Regards, DJB. http://bradderscleebirding.blogspot.co.uk/

Just to answer Barry's point. I gather the flooded area will be to the West of N Somercotes Haven which flows through Pyes Hall and out to sea there. The tides comes up to Pyes Hall quite high in the haven even when the foreshore at Stonebridge isn't covered. I presume this will be where they will make a breach or one of the other deep creeks that flow adjacent to the seawall to the West of Pyes hall. have a look at Grainthorpe on googleearth, its pretty impressive.

There is quite alot about this on the Environment Agency website at the URL below. See vol 1 of Tidenews. There was supposed to be more information coming out in the next edition in November but I haven't seen it yet.


http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/re ... 7/1315425/

thanks for that phil,i see what you mean about the drain,
its gonna be interesting when it happens.quite looking forward to it.