PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
There’s no denying that the coastline along the eastern shores of the UK is gradually eroding away under the relentless pressure of rising sea levels. Stories abound of houses literally dropping into the sea and local beauty spots disappearing under the waves. In the early days valiant attempts were made to combat this problem head-on: blockades and artificial barriers were put up to prevent the sea from making further incursions inland. But, as it turned out, this just shifted the problem elsewhere. It had to be recognised that the forces driving coastal change are so powerful that it is not sustainable to resist them. So now the policy is one of ‘managed retreat’. This, however, has several implications for Natura 2000 sites, many of which are located along the English coastline. Ensuring that the overall ecological requirements of the Natura 2000 sites are maintained in the long term requires that losses are made good by gains elsewhere, for instance, through the re-creation of areas with similar habitats. This LIFE project developed a strategic approach to integrating the management of flood risk with the ecological needs of Natura 2000. This would enable the UK Government to meet the obligations of Article 6(2) of the Habitats Directive - namely to avoid deterioration of natural habitats and the habitats of species - even at the cost of losing individual sites. The project was a collaborative effort between two public bodies: English Nature and the Environment Agency, operating under the guidance of an advisory group comprising nine other organisations including the National Farmers Union, the Country Landowners Association and several conservation organisations.
OBJECTIVES
The primary objective of the project was ‘to provide a strategic framework, guidance and practical mechanisms for the management and maintenance of the ecological requirements of Natura 2000 sites on dynamic coastlines in the long term’. The specific objectives and the four broad actions of the project were: 1. to develop a strategy for the management of coastal habitats on dynamic coastlines supporting features of EU importance, through the development of a model for Coastal Habitat Management Plans (CHaMPs) and the production of CHaMPs for seven pilot areas (covering altogether 32 pSCIs and SPAs). Each Plan is intended to provide a 50-year strategy for maintaining the ecological integrity of the area and to identify specific on-site measures for putting this strategy into practice; 2. to develop best practice guidance on the recreation and restoration of coastal habitats; 3. to implement demonstration projects under the North Norfolk Coast Management Plan Overview (MPO) to examine actual on-the-ground coastal habitat recreation and restoration and to understand what their role may be in maintaining the ecological integrity of the features of European importance. Experimental engineering work was undertaken at one site to attempt to re-create a protected coastal habitat within a designated site. This would inform the process of developing other CHaMPs and also demonstrate the techniques pioneered by the project. 4. to develop a framework for maintaining features of European importance in dynamic coastal situations. The expected outcomes were: 1. CHaMPs accepted as an effective way of dealing with dynamic change within the context of the Habitats Directive, and becoming established as a designated habitat monitoring tool for European sites. 2. A best practice guide assisting habitat schemes and promoting more effective ways of sustaining the Natura 2000 network. 3. The North Norfolk sites would require no human intervention once fully established. 4. The framework for maintaining features of European importance would produce a common understanding and appreciation as to how Natura 2000 sites should be handled under the Habitats Directive, and would contribute to effective implementation in the UK.
RESULTS
Seven Coastal Habitat Management Plans were completed by the end of the project. All CHaMPs are published on the website www.english-nature.org.uk/livingwiththesea The primary roles of CHaMPs are to act as an accounting system to record and predict losses and gains to habitat and to set the direction for habitat conservation measures to address net losses. Final CHaMPs were produced for Dungeness and Pett Levels, Essex Coast and Estuaries, Suffolk Coast and Estuaries, North Kent Coast and Estuaries, Winterton Dunes, Solent Coast and Estuaries and North Norfolk Coast The core of the CHaMP process represented an assessment of predicted geomorphologic change over a 30 -100 year timescale on designated habitats within the CHaMP area. The CHaMPs achieve this objective by identifying broad habitat changes and developing proposals for offsetting losses or relocating habitats. CHaMPs began by taking a precise accountancy approach to habitat loss and gain. As the pilots progressed it became clear that a more broad-scale approach was needed if they were to set a direction for habitat conservation measures to address net loss. The later CHaMPs took a much wider spatial and temporal view. The final CHaMPs examined estuary and coastal-wide processes, related these to more specific sub-units and finally looked outside the CHaMP complex. This allowed them to provide a much more robust and strategic view. Following the completion of the project, revised guidance to operating authorities is to be published by Defra. The development of CHaMPs has been iterative and has concluded that a wide view is required and that ‘super-CHaMPs’ may be necessary to look perhaps at a whole region, e.g. southeast England. The good practice guide has been completed as a CD-ROM as well as a Website. The final guide is aimed at practitioners developing schemes involving habitat creation or re-creation as part of CHaMP-style projects. Most users would therefore be coastal engineers and the guide takes this into account in its presentation. The guide will be linked to the re-publication of guidelines for CHaMPs and would remain as a technical backup to CHaMPs projects. Planned practical on-site works at Cley-Kelling had to be decoupled from the project. The final design, costing some £8 million, no longer met the original design parameters. Not only did successive design constraints and modifications alter the scheme to a point where it no longer reflected the original brief, but the work of the Living with the Sea LIFE project showed that the focus of the Cley-Kelling scheme was too much on preservation rather than working with natural dynamic change. Although the project was able to identify a number of potential alternative sites that could be considered, most of these could not be completed within the time-frame of the project. Works were completed, however, at Brancaster. Construction involved installation of water vole protection measures, excavation of rills and channels for the new saltmarsh and reed bed restoration works. The final phase involved the removal of the existing seawall. The material was incorporated into a new retreated clay embankment. Finally the revetment, rubble and gabions in the sand dune ridge were removed from site to re-establish the dune system’s natural form and function. At this stage the tide was allowed onto the site and the operation of the scheme checked. The works will continue to be monitored for three years. A final workshop ‘Living with the Sea: The next steps in partnership’ was held on 23 July 2003 at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. The event was used to disseminate the results of the project including the CHaMPs studies and the Guide to Habitat Restoration. A ‘European framework’ report was also presented at the project's final conference. It has been published as an illustrated booklet and a CD-ROM version and it is also placed on the website. The CHaMPs approach was successful in the project and helps to underpin several ‘managed coastal realignment’ schemes which have either been completed or are proposed in England. The CHaMPs approach provides a more strategic way of looking at the cumulative impact of a number of projects and marks a change from experimentation to policy. An England Action Plan is presented as one of the final project outputs; this will guide the development of the CHaMPs approach post-project.As more projects are developed over the next decades the value of the CHaMPs approach will be increasingly tested. The project itself was a learning process and a ‘lessons learnt’ document was compiled. One of the key issues for CHaMPs was the question of when should a designated habitat be maintained in situ. The CHaMPs approach shows that there need be no future conflict between flood and coastal defence requirements on the one hand, and the preservation of the habitats along the coast on the other, providing a long-term view is taken and that appropriate action is taken in advance of major problems. Overall the CHaMPs approach is designed to support the Natura 2000 network by seeking the maintenance of favourable conservation status with no net loss of habitat or interest features.