Building Beaches

Not too long ago, Essex was a key breeding ground for Little Terns. Its flat sand and shingle coastline was peppered with ideal places for these sociable summer visitors to create shallow nests, or scrapes, to raise their young. But with the combined threats of climate change, coastal development and disturbance from people, Little Tern have recently found it hard to find good places to breed. Between 1985 and 2000 their numbers fell by 38% in the UK, with many colonies in Essex disappearing all together.

With Essex numbers at a critical low, one small island offered a glimmer of hope. Privately owned Horsey Island in North Essex is home to the county’s largest and most reliable Little Tern population. For RSPB site manager Kieren Alexander protecting the site was a priority.

He said: “In that wider context of Essex, it is the jewel in the crown really. It’s the one place where we can say Little Terns will return to, they will breed successfully, and we can carry out management to help them.“

The reason for Little Terns doing so well on Horsey is its location. Little Terns prefer isolated quiet spots, away from predators, development and other beach lovers.

Kieren said: “They really don’t like human disturbance and any kind of dog off the lead, that can be the end of a colony really.”

But while Horsey’s inaccessible saltmarshes and lagoons provides some protection from disturbance, there is a bigger threat on the horizon. Rising seas caused by climate change are already eroding its beaches and extreme high summer tides are increasing, threatening to wipe out nests and chicks in an instant.

To prevent this happening, the RSPB struck up a partnership with Harwich Haven port authority. They were set to carry out a major channelling deepening project, using a dredger to remove tonnes of sand and shingle from around the port. Both parties and the landowner at Horsey could see the huge potential in using this material to create ideal new beachy habitat for the Little Terns. With an agreement in place the RSPB sought permission for the work and gained additional funding from the Environment Agency and EU Life.

In the winter of 2021, a dredger began sucking up sand and gravel from around the port. When full, it sailed very slowly down to Horsey and pumped the sand and gravel combined with seawater into the right spot to begin building new land.

The dredger crew and support team repeated this twice a day at high tide for over a month to shift a total of 50,000m3 (79,336 tonnes) of material.

Kieren said: “They were pretty relentless at it really, it was impressive stuff.”

“Obviously for us it was a really exciting thing, but for those guys it’s just a Tuesday. It’s what they do.”

With the sand and gravel in place it was left to the tides and winds to sculpt and shape it into a natural looking landscape. Over time it will drift back and join up with the existing beach, increasing its height and its resilience to rising seas. The hope is that the new beach will be suitable for the Little Terns for the next 50 or 60 years.

The impact of the work has been almost immediate. In summer 2022, 14 nests were found on the new beaches, plus a further eight nests on the existing bank. That’s an increase of five nests and 11 fledged chicks from 2021.

Kieren said: “That was really exciting for us, the Little Terns returned and used the new bits, which proved the theory that Little Terns like new freshly created habitats. But it also showed that the beach was secure and high enough to support breeding populations, which was great.

“Hopefully, fingers crossed, we will continue to see more birds. The aim is to get back up to between 35 and 40 pairs. I think with the new habitat created and the existing habitat we can easily get up to those numbers.”

But the work at Horsey isn’t just about Little Terns. Birds such as Ringed Plover and Oystercatchers also used the new sandy banks and beyond that, the whole area has benefitted.

Kieren said: “The driver for this project was Little Terns. But because of their presence, it has meant the project has delivered loads of extra bonus benefits such as flood defence, maintaining sea walls, the prevention of the erosion of saltmarsh but also that protecting of industry and that socio-economic element which plays such an important part of life in the area as well.”

Kieren stresses that none of the work would have been possible without working together, from the landowner of Horsey Island to the funders to the port authority.

Kieren said: “It does show you that when we work in partnership across a broad spectrum, we can achieve great things.”

“I’m really optimistic,” Kieren said. “I think we’re in a strong place really, it feels like we’ve secured the future of Little Terns on Horsey and its now about learning the lessons from that project and trying to replicate it, not just in Essex but elsewhere. Because there is quite a lot of material which gets dredged out of our ports and there is a real opportunity with that material to do positive things for habitat restoration, particularly along our coast.”