Sussex Wetlands Project Our achievements April 2014 – March 2015 Working with Others to Restore Wetlands and Wildlife 1 Background 3 Introduction 4 Summary of Project Achievements 2014 - 2015 6 Advising Landowners .............................................................................................. 7 New Project Officers to help Sussex Wetlands..................................................... 9 Creating a Living Landscape for Sussex ............................................................. 10 Catchment and Landscape Scale Project Work .................................................. 11 Habitat Surveys and Mapping ............................................................................... 17 Species Work .......................................................................................................... 22 Habitat Restoration ................................................................................................ 24 Policy and Advice................................................................................................... 26 Linking People and Water...................................................................................... 28 Press, Publicity and interpretation ....................................................................... 31 Other Wetland Projects.......................................................................................... 32 Public Liaison and Partnership Work................................................................... 33 Finance and Fundraising ....................................................................................... 35 Working with Volunteers ....................................................................................... 36 Looking to the Future............................................................................................. 37 2 Background Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT) is dedicated to supporting local communities to create a healthy living landscape which is beneficial both for people and for wildlife, and to helping communities articulate the true value of nature. We are a leader in the field of landscape scale land management, the creation of ecological and natural service networks, re-wilding and the restoration of natural processes. As well as managing our own nature reserves, we support and fund a range of projects which provide specialist support and advice throughout the rest of Sussex. Our Wetlands Project has been delivering wetland habitat and species conservation across the County for over 14 years, as well as providing advice to landowners and others on the benefits and conservation of water and the wetland environment. As a part of SWT’s Living Landscapes Team, with the Living Seas and the West Weald Living Landscape Project, Living Wetlands is helping to create a place for water in our landscapes, and to help people to realise the value of water and wetlands. The Living Wetland Project’s main aim is:- To promote the sustainable management of river catchments and their landscapes, and the restoration of wetland habitats for the benefit of both people and wildlife. We work to actively apply the Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT) Wetland Strategy, within which we aim to deliver the six guiding principles of a Living Wetland Landscape to Sussex. These are :- 1. Enabling Core Wildlife Areas to Thrive 2. Thinking and Delivering at the Landscape Scale 3. Making Green Infrastructure a reality 4. Influencing the Current and Future Agenda for Wetland Landscapes 5. Inspiring People about Living Landscapes 6. Gathering the Evidence needed to Inform Intelligent and Targeted Habitat Restoration 3 Introduction Water is fundamental to the survival of all life, and to the function of all our ecosystems. Wetlands are rich in biomass and species, and they perform essential ecosystem services such as water purification, flood storage and climate stabilisation. Within Sussex, our wetland resources have been heavily damaged and altered. Almost none of our remaining wetlands can be called natural, healthy or ancient. Nonetheless, many of our remnant wetlands such as chalk streams and wet heath, are unique in and extremely valuable Nationally and even Internationally. The aim of the Sussex Wildlife Trusts’ Wetland Project is to provide the foundations from which our most valuable wetland resources are recognised and, where appropriate, restored, enhanced and re-naturalised; with a view to creating a healthy, functioning wetland ecological network for the County and the Region. Many of our wetland resources affect, and are affected by things which happen over broad geographical areas. Therefore a key element of our work involves partnerships and cooperative working with local people across catchments and living landscape areas, and across a broad spectrum of different stakeholders. This year has seen the landscape scale approach to enhancing Sussex Wetlands go from strength to strength. We have secured further funding for the Trees on the River Uck (TrUck) Natural Flood Management (NFM) project, which has enabled us to expand the project to cover the whole of the River Ouse catchment. The project, now known as the Sussex Flow Initiative (SFI) – River Ouse, will now continue to provide advice across Sussex and beyond about how our natural landscapes can be used and assisted to reduce flood risk to people and property. This year has also seen the momentum of the Arun & Rother Connections (ARC) Project accelerate, with new staff and new projects enabling us to help local people to improve their river catchment by tackling landscape-scale issues such as flooding, wildlife decline, water quality and invasive species. We continue to gather evidence to convince others of the essential natural benefits that our rivers and wetlands provide for the people of Sussex. Local volunteers learning to search for endangered Great Crested Newts in the ARC project area 4 It has been a milestone year with our work on endangered wetland species. We have celebrated 20 years of working on a voluntary project with Kew Gardens (Wakehurst) to secure the future of the endangered Black poplar tree. We have digitally mapped over 8,000 trees which we have planted across Sussex and the UK over the last 20 years, and we are working with the millennium seedbank to see if it is possible to reproduce Black poplars from seed. Otters have been sadly absent from the County this year, but we have worked closely with the ARC project to set up toad and water vole patrols in the Arun & Rother Valleys, and we have helped with surveying and mapping large areas for dragonflies and invasive wetland plant species. We maintain and update County databases regularly with wetland species records, and follow up many of those sightings with advice and site visits. We have continued to support landowners across the County with free advice across thousands of acres of land, cultivating many new relationships and partnerships in the process, and we are working with many of these landowners to achieve our maxim of ‘bigger, better and more joined up’, by continuing to restore and enhance wetland habitats across the County including chalk streams, wet heath, floodplain meadow, floodplain woodland, ponds and fens. We are still working to put all our valuable wetlands ‘on the map’ by funding surveys of key habitats, including several hundred hectares of floodplain surveys in the Arun and Rother Valleys this year. We are actively involved in catchment partnerships as the joint catchment lead on the Cuckmere and Pevensey Catchment partnership, and as a key stakeholder and deliverer of the Ouse and Adur Pilot Catchment, the Eastern Rother Catchment partnership, and the Arun & Western Streams Catchment. These catchment partnerships are We have now grown and planted over 8,000 working to deliver the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in young Black poplar trees in Sussex and beyond, with the help of landowners and partnership with others to create beneficial changes on the Wakehurst place over the last 20 years. This ground on a whole range of issues including fish passage, will ensure the survival of the species for future generations. invasive species and diffuse and direct pollution. We hope that you will be as pleased as we are with our achievements this year. We hope too that you will support us in our efforts to protect and enhance our rivers and landscapes for you and for wildlife, both now and for the future. Who knows, perhaps today you are watching a kingfisher, a marsh harrier, or a brown trout by a river somewhere, or watching clean water pour out of your tap, and you are appreciating some of our efforts to sustain the water environment? 5 Summary of Project Achievements 2014 - 2015 HABITAT DELIVERY Total Habitat restored: Floodplain Woodlands = 3 ha (SFI & ARC) Total Wet heath restored = approx 2 ha Total Rivers & Streams restored = 3 km (ARC & Knepp) Total Floodplain Meadow restored = 0.5 ha (ARC) Total Ponds restored = 6 (ARC) Total Floodplain surveyed = 263.2 ha SPECIES DELIVERY Total Black poplars distributed = 619 Length of watercourse surveyed for otters = 25 km Length of watercourse surveyed for water voles = Over 30km by Volunteers + 20km SWP Total new species records submitted to SxBRC = Over 8,900 Total length of streams surveyed for invasive species = Minimum 20 km ADVISING LANDOWNERS Area of land with advice given = 14,537.2 acres / 5,885.5 hectares Unique landowners visited = 59 visits (31 new landowners) ADVISING OTHERS – PUBLIC LIAISON & PARTNERSHIP WORK Local