Plea to protect Essex saltmarshes that store carbon and help fight against climate change

More action is needed to protect and restore vital saltmarshes, conservationists have warned.

The coastal environments act as carbon stores, playing a key role in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and making them an important part of efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

They also provide habitats for wildlife and natural flood management to vulnerable coastal communities.

However experts warn that 85% of the UK’s saltmarshes have been lost since the mid 19th century.

Those that remain are threatened by coastal development, pollution from agricultural run-off and sewage, and climate change.

At Abbotts Hall nature reserve on the Blackwater Estuary near Colchester, work is already underway to expand and conserve their saltmarshes.

In 2002, Essex Wildlife Trust created nearly 50 hectares of restored saltmarsh, by purposefully breaching old sea walls and allowing sea water to move inland.

The nature reserve is part of a national research project to monitor how much carbon dioxide these coastal habitats can absorb - with a flux tower installed on the marsh earlier this year.

The analysis aims to support further restoration around the country and to include saltmarshes in official data on the UK’s greenhouse gases.

Rachel Langley from Essex Wildlife Trust, said: “Saltmarshes are key carbon habitats, and they are key estuarine habitats, particularly important along the Essex coast and other areas in the UK.

“They are important as habitat in their own right, in terms of saltmarsh species, and that in turn supports biodiversity of wider species such as wildfowl and waders.

“Saltmarsh provides shelter and a feeding ground for young fish species, and also provides benefits in terms of flood alleviation for communities and terrestrial habitats along the coast.

“It also sequesters and stores carbon, so all of those team together to make it a really important coastal habitat,” she said.

Ms Langley said recreating saltmarsh, like the project in 2002, could help maintain the habitat in the face of rising seas and other pressures.

She also highlighted the importance of protecting and restoring existing marshes, saying they had a value to people as “one of our last wilderness habitats in the UK”.

“You’ve got the moody estuaries and that feeling, it can be quiet or you just hear the odd curlew sound in the winter, it is really evocative and you can really feel that connection to nature,” she said.

“I think it’s really quite special. Standing on a marsh is completely different to a feeling you get anywhere else.”

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