The Lincolnshire Bird Club

if it is the RSPB be prepared to get more than a stuffed seal rammed down your throat. I imagine that you yourself are a person and so it would be important to make sure that whoever gets to manage the site they must consider people.

Hearing "the aim is to replenish lost saltmarsh on the Humber" + "small scale habitat enhancements - but the site will largely have to look after itself" is not what I and plenty of others were hoping to hear but something we feared was going to be the case. I'm guessing in years to come we could end up with just a saltmarsh extension to Grainthorpe Marsh though I hope I'm wrong.

I would like to say thanks though to both John and Dave for shedding more light on future plans for Donna Nook.

regards

Chris

whilst all info is helpful discrepancies on the ground do not match what is being said on here. firstly the locked gates, site contractors say not us, it is the wildfowlers and visa versa who has put the combination lock on the gates ??!!!!. secondly management, i have inquired at a reasonably high level within the rspb - no present plans, i have been told its a political minefield. my thoughts are merely my own speculation, but several bodies could be interested if things were right. now thinking what could be wrong, could it be that the enviroment agency is trying to offload all future costs of sea defence repairs on site to the tenant or conservation body. which looking back to 1954 could be horrendous. these are just my thoughts and what makes everything so top secret, in my experiance secrecy hides things that people do not want the public to know and it is never anything good or a means to celebrate comes out off it. i agree with chris about the desperate need in the frozen north of the county for scrapes, managed of cause by anybody with conservation in mind. hmmm !!! i wander but i have a suspicious mind but i am really a million miles away.

terry whalin

Right from the very beginning when meetings were being held with locals the phrase "something's not right here" were rife, things have never seemed right, it has always seemed that something bigger was going on behind the scenes but no one ever found out what.
Personally speaking, although I would love to see this area as attractive to wildlife as Frampton, the destruction of prime food growing agricultural land in these times of overcrowding and worldwide food shortages (well there certainly will be this year) is crass. The notion that this is a flood relief scheme somehow doesn't ring true to me but... yes, what do I know.
"the aim is to replenish lost saltmarsh on the Humber" I was wondering, what lost saltmarsh are they talking about? If they really wanted to let the sea in like this, why didn't they RE-OPEN the reclaimed saltmarsh on Tetney marsh, that area of saltmarsh was reclaimed around the 80's and cattle now graze it, they could have knocked a hole to the sea there.
TBC

As I understand it, the Donna Nook coast realignment is essentially intended to replace intertidal habitat, both saltmarsh and mudflats, needed by wildlife on the Humber but expected to be lost to 'coastal squeeze' due to rising sea levels over coming decades - seems like an excellent use of land to me, whatever the previous 'value' to others. Other habitat improvement/creation measures 'around the edges' of the scheme will hopefully be a successful bonus, increasing the wildlife diversity of the site. I understand, from a source within EA, that the 1970's Tetney reclaim area was initially considered, but rejected at least partly due to its relatively small area.
Ian Shepherd

It was good to see some water in the scrapes when I visited yesterday but a bulldozer was smoothing the area so didn't see any waders yet.
Regarding Dave Bromwich's comments that the site will largely have to look after itself. With a site this large you would expect that but the wader scrapes and tern islands will need managing, maybe volunteers will be needed to help out here (a chance for the Lincs Bird Club to be involved perhaps?) The West Midland Bird Club help manage Belvide Reservoir in Staffs.
However until the work is completed we will just have to see how things develop.
Geoff

I think Ian has it mostly right. My reading from all the material that the EA has published is that mudflats are really what they are after and they don't take much management as the sea does it for you as Dave points out. My view is that the Donna Nook realignment is all about replacement habitat under the EU habitats directive for industrial reclamation further up the estuary. A senior bod from the EA made this point at a public meeting in N Somercotes school back in 2009 but no one seems to have picked it up.

There seems to be a bit of fantasy birding going on here. There has never been any suggestion that there will be scrapes, the ponds in the meadow near the car park will be for natterjack toads not waders. The tern islands offer the hope of some interest, mainly for high tide wader roosts I would imagine. They will need alot of management work if they are to be kept in attractive conditions for tern breeding and it may take some years to attract them in.

It will all be new wildlife habitat so lets keep our fingers crossed it turns out good. I can't see that much role for the RSPB, as there will not be water level management required on any large scale. Plenty of scope for LWT volunteers to help out with the tern island management and I, and I hope many others on the site will be up for that.

My own fantasy would be a gull billed tern and a caspian tern roosting in a mixed tern colony sometime in July 2018.

well phil i was told that the conservation bodies were all consulted at the planning stage and there were probably a couple of hides and scrapes in fact the wildfowlers were concerned about shooting access to what would be a reserve as well as a flood releif system. as i have said previously the facts and the chat and understanding on the ground do not match up. surely someone should stand up and say this is what is happening. are there scrapes or not ??, are there hides or not ???, is there access or not ???, its just a stoney silence. who does know ??. the enviroment agency should tell us after all, i through my taxes employ them and pay there wages and is there any accountability ???.

terry whalin

No hides. Some scrapes (as long as they will last without management). Little tern islands, shingled, I see no reason why terns shouldn't take to it first year it is ready (2013). Should get ringed plover and oyster catcher on em, also swimming foxes of course. There will be access/ public footpaths around area.
After that, who knows what is not for humble serfs such as our good selves. (We'll have a natter when we meet up Terry, some things are best left unwritten.)

ok colin but if no scrapes - no hides ornithologically we are nothing but losers with the habitat destruction along the sea wall - pyes all gone for a chop with the saltwater ingress. the few bits of scrub for migrants will all be lost. gainers will be wildfowlers, all the locals with better protection. lip service with a shingle scrape for us otherwise nothing. could the reason for the silence be shhh lets get it done then its to late to object, it stinks,

terry whalin

From what I’ve seen on the plans and discussions that I have been party too at Parish Council meetings, we have already provided ourselves with the all the answers in the dialogue we have had on the Forum to date, so I hope this is acceptable as a summary. I think it is then a case of “wait and see”?

The sole purpose of the project is to provide replacement habitat for lost saltmarsh in the Humber due to coastal squeeze.

North Somercotes Parish Council doesn’t want it developed or promoted as a ‘nature reserve’, as the residents have enough grief around the Marsh Lane area with the seal traffic for 3 months of the year. Therefore no hides, no loos, no café, new car park to be the same size as the current one.

There is no decision yet from EA as to its future management, other than it will have certain operational requirements to ensure appropriate habitat replacement and managed flood banks. There will be some interesting habitat dynamics after the breach (May/June 2013), as we have seen at Alkborough, Chowder Ness and Frieston. The sea and the silt will dictate the management.

The tern islands will need some looking after. One of them is 6 acres in extent!!!!!! Anybody remember the “Chalk Track” at Tetney? When it was constructed in the late 70’s it attracted, for a few years, the biggest Little Tern colony in the UK. (120 pairs). I know, because I was warden there in 1982! These new islands could be very good, notwithstanding the usual predator problems.

The area between the old sea bank and new bank by the new car park looks like it has the potential for a bit of wet grassland/dune slack habitat, hence the natterjack toad potential. There has also been some local criticism of the loss/damage of a bee orchid area on the dune, which this area may well also help to sort out. Any dune grassland with pools is going to be worth a regular look for the odd pipit etc dropping in on its way from Spurn?

The migrant bird potential has been noted by EA – some areas between the new and old sea banks as you head up to Grainthorpe will be planted with scrub to provide extensive linear shelter belts – ideal for spotting the odd warbler? (John Walker has played a blinder on the habitat tweaks front).

Access – the bank tops will give you about 4kms of walking around the site, although you won’t be able to do a circular route because of the breach. But I’m sure in time certain birding hot-spots will develop for a variety of species.

EA have been very mindful to try and build in as much habitat/access as they can and they have consulted widely to try and come up with as many ideas as possible. However they have also had to take in to account other user-group wishes from the Parish – such as horse riders, dog walkers etc.

I think it is an exciting project, and despite the food security debate and the loss of productive farmland to the sea, it’s going to produce some good bird records, especially with Steve Lorand on the door step and much better for wildlife than several hundred acres of intensively managed farmland!

Odd you should say "it stinks" because I wonder where all the effluent that currently runs out onto the outer reaches of Grainthorpe marsh via the drain and out to sea will go.
If the tide is now going to come in as far as that little pumping station near Donna Nook car park, that surely means the effluent will swill around the area of 'reclamation'? How much nearer to the village will that stink be?

There will be scrapes...

I wonder if spring high tides would have an impact on these "scrapes" and shingle islands. We just have to wait and see what comes out of all this. Personally aslong as the area is well managed and not left to itself I don't mind who runs it. But some information now would be nice.

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http://anthonybentleywildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

UK life list 310 (Harlequin Duck)
Lincolnshire List 246 (Puffin)
Village (Brigsley) list 99 (Shelduck)

Thanks Anthony

Come on guys.......enough of the doom and conspiracy theories and give the project a bit of credit! There are lot of skilled technical people involved with this from a variety of backgrounds and companies. It has been given a lot of thought.

There is a new, larger pumping station being built to cope with the tidal issues and flood water.

The shingle islands have been engineered to sit just above the highest springs. They will be covered with a terram fabric to try and supress any weed growth for as long as practicable. These will be the biggest artificial islands of their kind ever built on the Lincs coast.

On the big spring tides the vast majority of the site will go under water (except for the islands). Scrapes and creeks will form through 'natural processes'.

This is my last post on the subject. I think we have all had enough for now.

Regards