Cliffe Pools

The Big News!

Is that the HLF (Heritage Lottery Fund) has awarded the Cliffe Project £1.7m.,

which will be put towards nature trails and hides (including a reception hide),

toilets and an education discovery zone. We also have funding from SEEDA to

provide a new car park at Salt Lane that should, hopefully, be in position by

the Summer.

This is a large chunk of the £6.5m needed to fund Stage l of the project, that

is everything except the ‘all singing all dancing’ Rainha1n—style visitor centre. 

We still need to cross the T’s and dot the l’s on the detail but all is looking good

so far. 

South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) has been helping the

RSPB get the project off the ground during the past year and is funding a lull time

Project Manager for three years to develop the RSPB’s plans for the site, seek

further funding and undertake initial site investigations and studies. 

The consultation drop—in meetings held for people to offer their opinions were

very informative and, for the large part, positive. Overall, the project is seen

as an improvement to the area and the locals are mostly on board, there were

some concerns over the route of some of the trails and whether or not there

would be access for horse riders but with good communication, we felt these

could be resolved amicably.

Ordinary Stuff

The end of the year was as hectic as ever, with both the Restoration Plan and the

Management Plan running towards tight deadlines, end of February and the end of

April respectively. So if anyone moans that they never see me out and about on the

reserve I’ve got my excuses all lined up and ready, l think I’ll send a volunteer out

with a camera so I don’t forget what the place looks like.

On that note, though I’ve been given the OK to recruit an Assistant Warden, their

job will spread across Shorne, Cliffe and Northward Hill, but should give us much

more a presence on the ground at Cliffe, helping to deter the bikers and other such

riff raff. On the touchy subject of bikers they’ve still been getting in somewhere,

despite Jackson’s new beefed-up fencing. I believe they lift their bikes over the

horse style, which is alongside one of our gates. Another touchy subject as this has

been modified to try and stop the bikers and now it stops horses as well - sometimes

you just can’t win. We persevere though and Jackson’s have now plugged another

gap in the border at Cliffe Creek.

We’ve got the analysis back of the substrate samples from the Black Bam Pools and

a more noxious mix would be hard to find! A nasty combination of heavy metals and

hydrocarbons left over from the good old days before all this pesky waste disposal

legislation.  The upshot is that we want to disturb this stuff as little as possible and

that’s going to severely limit the amount of re-profiling possible on the pools. So

we’re back to square one in looking for a possible solution.

A visit to the site by ecologists from our Headquarters at Sandy put forward the

possibility that the water levels would rise in the pools as we raise the level in the

main lagoons. This would seem to be the case looking back over the past records

and as we intend to have a much higher water level in the lagoons after the

restoration, with luck the problem may cure itself.

This will probably mean that the pools will become more saline than brackish so

another possible solution might be to allow water in from the lagoons directly, at

key times such as in early autumn to wet the pools up and attract down the passage

waders

Carol has led two work parties this winter continuing the work of strimming back

the vegetation on the islands for the benefit of the common terns. The regular

volunteers along with me have recently designed and built a tem raft, which we

hope will encourage the common terns to resume breeding at the pools as numbers

have been dropping recently

The autumn wader roosts are long gone now except for 700 lapwings wintering on

the Black Bam Pools, these have been largely replaced by wintering wildfowl.

Pochard numbers have increased to 200ish and have been joined by 300 odd teal

and 400 or so wigeon. Shelduck, and shoveler numbers remain constant around 45-50.

Ten goldeneyes have joined the 100 tufted ducks. The 30 ruddy ducks that were on

site have removed themselves to an adjacent quarry and as long as they stay there

it's one less thing for me to worry about.

Other notables have been thin on the ground lately but a ring-tailed hen harrier

made an appearance in late November and four ruff have been seen recently on

the Black Bam Pools. A notable absence so far this year is short-eared owls;

hopefully they’ll show up later in the spring.

Northward Hill Marshes

A small mention about the marshland at Northward Hill (NH), as that’s my patch

also and sometimes it can get left out. Lots of work is happening at NH this winter

improving the habitat of the marsh, re-profiling rills and creating new areas of

shallow flooding to link them up. We’ve also installed two large sluices; one at the

northern most point of the reserve to act as a new reference point for our

abstraction licence and one other to act as an overflow, if by some stretch of the

imagination we ever get too much water. That’s what dreams are made of, and at

the moment all I can do is dream because, despite the downpour outside the

window as I type, the marsh is bone dry!

We’re still playing catch-up from the last few years of drought and our neighbour has

dammed the input stream to the reserve. The EA is investigating this, but then

they’ve been doing that for the last year! A strong letter (with much input from the

Lodge Legal Dept) has been sent to encourage them to move and remind them of

how serious the matter is.