The Making Space for Nature Project is leading on Kent and Medway’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). A team has been in place since October, engaging with stakeholders about nature recovery plans for Kent's future.
The county of Kent is blessed with an extensive coastal and intertidal environment comprising elements of the eastern Thames Estuary, the southern North Sea and the English Channel. In north-east Kent, located between the towns of Whitstable and Deal, is the North East Kent Marine Protected Area (NEKMPA) which includes the previously designated North East Kent European Marine Site, the Thanet Coast Marine Conservation Zone and Sandwich & Pegwell Bay National Nature Reserve.
Those of you who have been following the development of the Blue Influencers Scheme being delivered by Kent Wildlife Trust may recall that KWT successfully bid for funding from The Ernest Cook Trust and the #iwill Fund and were awarded £20,000 a year for three years. This enabled the recruitment of Jenny Luddington to the role of Blue Mentor, who will be responsible for recruiting young people to become ‘Blue Influencers’.
In the winter, South Swale welcomes migrating birds such as brent geese, turnstones, dunlin, avocets, osytercatchers and ringed plovers. In the summer, it's home to carpets of flowers which attract butterflies and some rare bee species!
Saltwater marshes and mudflats form as saltwater floods swiftly and silently up winding creeks to cover the marsh before retreating again. This process reveals glistening mud teeming with the invisible life that draws in thousands of birds to feed.
Whether they are tumbles of soft rock home to a variety of invertebrates, or hard, soaring rock faces bustling with huge seabird colonies, cliffs may be challenging to explore but are well worth the reward.
Sand dunes are places of constant change and movement. Wander through them on warm summer days for orchids, bees and other wildlife, or experience the forces of nature behind their creation – the raw power of a winter storm.
Skip the town beach and find an untamed shore to explore. Wild sand and shingle beaches are great places to see the variety of natural habitats and the amazing force of the elements that help shape them.
Enormous flocks of geese, ducks and swans swirl down from wide skies to drop onto the flat, open expanses of flooded grazing marshes in winter. In spring, lapwing tumble overhead and the soft, damp ground speckled with cuckooflowers provides excellent habitat for waders probing for prey in the damp soil. By summer, when the ground is drier, some marshes are cut for hay or silage, but the ditches remain wet and come alive with dragonflies and other insects.
Rob Smith joins Craig Edwards, RSPB Area Warden for Dungeness nature reserve. Learn about the management of this reserve and the wildlife you can see in between a nuclear power station and MOD facility. It's incredible!
