ECOS 35(2) 2014 ECOS 35(2) 2014 and elements from the past we want the future to hold. (Ye olde tea shoppe, but with clean modern loos.) Yes – if we can reach consensus on such things. And yes A stormy idea: responding – unless we can replace it with something we feel is better. Can we, though, agree what might be ‘better’…? to rapid change in coastal It may be that we should rethink what ‘heritage’ is about, and in some cases reject it. The idea of heritage is, anyway, becoming quite clouded, in the flux of political and philosophical changes, the slowly growing influence of women, the increased ecosystems clout and demands of youth-culture, and the fascinating but bewildering multi- cultural social mix. We may still need to ask “Whose heritage?”, but the answer is less obvious than it was, and the outcomes may need negotiation. The management of protected areas in coastal environments requires an appreciation of ecological, climatic, socio-political, and economic influences on conservation, and often ‘Heritage’ signifies different things to different people. It is qualified for each of us balancing these factors is problematic. This article looks at the storm surge of 2013, by our upbringing and our experiences. Sometimes, we see what we are told is our and asks what lessons might be learned from such an event, and how this might be of heritage, and we reject it. Sometimes, we shrink from it horrified. We need to check benefit to coastal conservationists in the future. against our personal assumptions what the heritage means and offers to other people. What does it mean and what does it offer, for example, to someone who is chronically THOMAS PRYKE disabled, or blind, to an immigrant or exile, to a devout Moslem, or an animist, to someone suffering agoraphobia, to a down-and-out, or to a victim of rape? The storm surge that struck the east coast of England on 5-6 December 2013 had the potential to re-engage both conservationists and the wider public with an Notes area that we, as an island nation, are defined by: our coast. As it transpired, this 1 ‘£3m bid to save Dean traditions’ Forester 9 August 2012. An advertisement by the Forest of Dean event was at the vanguard of the wettest winter recorded for the UK, with parts Landscape Partnership Scheme invited the involvement of local people. of southern England receiving unprecedented levels of rainfall.1 Headline-grabbing 2. Whether or not sheep are a commonable species is disputed. infrastructural damage in the south-west and the politicization of the extensive 3. Tom Brereton (2004) Farming and butterflies in Britain The Biologist 51(1): 32-36. flooding of the Somerset Levels captivated public and politician’s alike2, 3, leaving 4. ‘Sheep-wrecked’ is George Monbiot’s term, in Feral, Allen Lane, 2013. discussions of the coastal storm event to ebb into the background. 5. Fitting the picture isn’t only English, or European, or Western. Eg. Maggie Keswick, in her forward to Ji Cheng’s early seventeenth century Chinese The craft of Gardens (tr. Alison Hardie, Shanghai Press 1988, Betterlink Books 2012), relays the comment of a twentieth century Chinese that “The question of reality will not really bother Taking stock of the 2013 impacts [the garden visitor], as soon as he ceases to be in the garden and starts to live in the painting”. In terms of storm events, this was undoubtedly a significant episode. A combination of low 6. Martin Spray (1993) ‘Concerning little things’, ECOS 14(1) 37-41. atmospheric pressures and high winds coupled with a spring tide resulted in the highest 7. Discussed in Richard Dixon’s The Baumgarten corruption. From sense to nonsense in art and philosophy, storm surge the UK has seen since the fatal event of 19534 (which commemorated its Pluto Press, 1995. 60th anniversary last year5), even being recorded as having surpassed those levels in 8. Slugs, at least, have a champion: the Ugly Animal Preservation Society is actually a stand-up comedy act 6 “dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature’s more aesthetically challenged children”. There some coastal areas of East Anglia. Thankfully, the coastal defences ensured that this time is a lot to do…. ‘One minute with Simon Watt’ New Scientist 22 June 2013, p. 27; www.newscientist. around no lives were lost as a direct result of the storm surge effects, although extensive com/article/mg21829220.300-forget-pandas--ugly-animals-should-be-protected-too.html#.U8wRaHnjjm4 . and damaging flooding was seen in Scarborough, Yorkshire, Boston, Lincolnshire, and 9. Paul Selman (2010) Learning to love the landscapes of carbon neutrality Landscape research 35(2) 157-71, Lowestoft, Suffolk. Also, at the village of Hemsby in Norfolk, several houses that were and online; (2007) What if sustainable landscapes aren’t always beautiful? Landscape Research Extra nr. 43: located on the low, sandy cliffs were washed into the sea. 5-7, and online. 10. Arthur G. Tansley Our heritage of wild nature, C.U.P., 1945. However, what of the effects beyond the infrastructural and property issues that 11. This was before the relief offered by fracking. The ‘peak’ idea has always looked a controversial one, associated with fear of the future rather than an incentive to change direction, let alone with some sense of duty. can dominate the discussions relating to coastal management? Numerous areas 12. To the ocean, too. protected for conservation were severely affected at points all along the East 13. That is a poetic way of expressing it. I do not see Hom. sap. as “outside Nature”. I do not imply that this is Anglian coastline. Overtopping and breaching of natural features and protective or isn’t Ian’s position. sea walls alike resulted in large areas of this coast being inundated, with some of the flooding persistent. The RSPB’s 108ha Havergate Island reserve had, for a Martin Spray is at [email protected] short period, almost entirely disappeared from view after the storm, and significant freshwater marshes such as Dingle Marshes (owned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust and RSPB) were flooded with sea water for a several weeks after the event. 54 55 ECOS 35(2) 2014 ECOS 35(2) 2014 It is possible that we are in a “period of change” in relation to storminess, but but arguably it is within the spaces that we manage for conservation purposes where we cannot be sure of the present point of the trajectory. There are suggestions we are perhaps more free to allow such coastal changes to be expressed. in the UK Climate Impact Programme’s 2008 Trends report7 that such shifts in storminess are linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), although at present A blessing in disguise? this relationship lacks any quantifiable evidence and no such link was identified Decisions about the current and future management of conservation areas often in the most recent IPCC report.8 Even with such uncertainty regarding predicted involve multiple management inputs coupled with predictive data that generate periodicities and intensities of storms, the surge event of 2013 might offer lessons complex plans and strategies. The issue of sea level rise is the focus of innumerate for coastal conservation management, and perhaps challenge how we think about studies11, and can be readily considered in strategies and plans because of the future storms as part of our planning for climate resilience. more long-term expression of its effects and the progressive nature of predicted change. Storminess, on the other hand, is more of a challenge to plan for, due to Holding your nerve the unpredictability in frequency and size of future events7,8, and because of storm The National Trust reported that the December 2013 storm completely stripped events’ high linkage and dependence on other factors, such as sea level rise, which away the dune systems from a large part of Brancaster beach on the north Norfolk carry the potential to shift the baseline for these events.12 coast overnight. However, within two to three months the sea had re-deposited the material and a significant majority of the dunes had been re-formed, according The December 2013 storm surge caused overtopping and breaching of both natural to the Trust.9 These dunes were almost certainly re-deposited in a different and artificial defences as it tracked along the east coast. Natural England estimated configuration, but nevertheless they had returned and were undoubtedly serving a that approximately 4,500 ha of designated coastal nature conservation sites in England protective function once again. were flooded.13 However, for some of these sites such an event might be viewed as something of a release of pressure, in more than one sense, as discussed below. Further down the coast in Suffolk is another example of ecological change, where a leaking pipe allowed for saline water to back-flood a freshwater marshland that was Hazlewood Marshes is a predominantly freshwater wetland site located behind an part of the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve. In a recent interview (conducted as part of wider embankment on the River Alde in Suffolk, managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. current research) a local conservation manager recalled the “shock and horror” this Concerns over how a changing climate may affect the site, and what measures was met with by conservation managers, but also how, soon after the event, there might be taken to work with or against natural forces, had been discussed for some was a realisation that the saline area was attracting a novel type of bird population time and tentatively worked into the site’s management plan, yet overnight the there – effectively the “demons became heroes”.