How This Degraded Land was Transformed into Thriving Wetlands

okay good morning yes just about it's 11 58 and in today's video we are going to be visiting a rewiring project like no other in the country like no other in europe wallacy island it's just across the river there and i'm going to tell the story of how it was created and why it's awesome specifically how 3 million tons of earth would dug up from the depths of london and ship 50 miles to essex at wallacey it's an incredible story and i'm very excited to get myself across there [Music] so i actually live and i've grown up along the river crouch i'm living in burnham at the minute which is the last town sort of as you're getting out uh as far east as you can go and i remember about five years ago when i would come out on the sea wall i would look across and you would see these you see this great big platform with like huge big digger arms and there was like a conveyor belt it was all very mechanical and still contraptions it looked like something was being built built there like some kind of of development and there was something being built there but it wasn't like a building or anything it was a nature reserve that was being constructed now i could drive there which would take about an hour i could alternatively swim which would be quite treacherous and i do have quite a lot of camera gear on me i think there's another way [Music] ouch can you see me i think you can i think you can see me alright so what is policy island welcome to policy island what is polish island voice island is a creative coastal nature reserve and at the time of its creation it was the largest of its kind throughout europe i think it might still be it actually has quite a well-documented history with early evidence showing that romans used the site for salt extraction and then around the 15th century this is when dutch settlers came and they drained the land and they built the original sea wall and then as time went by the use of this land for agriculture only intensified especially during the world war the first second world war all of this land was reclaimed for agriculture growing crops and it wasn't until the year 2000 that the rspb identified this as a prime location to rewild and to specifically rebuild it as now this is the broad term salt marsh so what actually is saltwater so salt marsh is a coastal habitat that relies upon the tidal flow of water it typically forms on areas of low topography it has a special name for how it naturally forms and that is known as coastal accretion which is simply where as the tyre flows in and it flows out it leaves behind sediment and that sediment builds up and then and then and then over time plant life can grow but over the last century it has declined massively and it was seen as an unproductive wasteland it's crazy to think that this could be some of the earth that came from london and it's just been spread out here incredible so why is salt marsh so awesome so i am a huge fan of salt marsh let me tell you i think it's had such a rough time of it across the globe especially in the country especially in the southeast right so obviously salt marsh it's a natural habitat which means it's going to be great for wildlife it's great for birds ground nesting birds over wintering birds these mud flats and mudflats which go off out there they are fantastic for birds like a huge restaurant where loads of little invertebrates live and also fish the avenues the networks of water that come into the salt marsh creates opportunities for fish and also seals i see many asil on this river but where salt marsh gets really cool is the environmental services the ecosystem services that it provides people with the environment with so soul marsh is a natural flood plain it acts as a buffer zone so when there's a storm and there's particularly high tides and surging water instead of all of that going into our towns and into our villages the salt marsh can absorb that and it doesn't only absorb it it also enhances the water quality because of the roots of the plants and the bacteria in the mud they can take out some of the excess chemicals in the water but the really cool thing about salt marsh is the way that it stores carbon now every year annually terrestrial forests store anywhere between four to five grams per square meter this is every year right whereas salt marsh per square meter stores 218 grams per square meter every year that's something like does something like 40 times more now i'm not bashing trees or woodlands i love them but there's always such a huge emphasis put on planting trees to improve the environment to help nature to store carbon when in actual fact we should be creating salt marsh all right so with the chatter of these goals over here i think they're black headed goals they're having a whale of a time over there all right so without going on behind me i thought i would tell you the unique part of the story which is how what island was created how on earth did they ship three million tons of earth from london to wallacey island so it all started with the rspb when they purchased the land here this was initially owned by farmers it was it was agricultural land but then in 2007 this was when the collaboration between the rspb and the crossrail project was born now the crossrail project was a 118 kilometer long railway development that went through london and it involved a lot of excavating and tunneling and it was that earth that was then shipped here to create these islands and to create the reserve as we see it today but that's very easily said the question is how on earth did they do it it all got started at the cutter head 42 meters below london and all that earth gets driven by truck and dumped into a 16-ton skip which then gets raised up to 42 meters to the surface where it meets a crusher and conveyor belt that moves the dirt into the back of a truck which then drives 10 miles to the docklands transfer site where it all gets loaded and put back through another hover and onto a conveyor belt that gets the dirt all the way down a jetty and onto the back of the boat that then embarks on a 50 mile trip to wallacey island upon arrival the boat is greeted by four unloading machines yes that's the technical term that the guy used in the video that they then dump onto yet another conveyor belt system that then travels to what's known as a radio stacker that deposits the mod onto some 20 dump trucks that transports the dirt around the site to create the various habitats and in total over 1 000 boats made the journey to wallacey islands what a noise these guys are making i can see i think there's one canadian geese just over there uh in in the middle there's a few more all they need is some fish and chips and they'll be in heaven so the creation of wallacy was an incredible feat of engineering and the collaboration between the two companies was very admirable but what can we learn from wallacey how can we apply what's happened here to other parts of our coastlines and our salt marsh i think fundamentally we cannot ignore salt marsh going forward for the way it provides habitat to an array of wildlife but also because of the ecosystem services that it offers and we need that now more than ever but do you need a city-wide tunneling excavation project in order to create salt marsh well no you don't but if you can strike up that partnership then it's a good thing to do but as we've touched already there was a much more passive way there was a much more cost effective way of creating salt marsh and that is allowing the water back in that is allowing nature to take the driving scene if you want to see the behind the scenes of this video then you can catch that over on patreon and believe me a lot happened in order to get here i know it is just across the river but i came here last week and it was incredibly windy and everything got trashed oh my word i picked the best day to come and create this video just just if you're curious go and check it out over on patreon over the summer leaf curious is going to be venturing out to more rewiring projects so if you have any just let me know down in the comments youtube reckons that you want to watch this video next but in the meantime thank you so much for watching leave curious

Channel: Leave Curious

Views: 20,109

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Id: At_eOE18e30

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022