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Inspiring People & Enabling Wildlife Recovery ~
Retired parish clerk Keith Metcalf, local wildlife author and spokesperson for Wings Wildlife Vision is speaking at the Sea Road Community Centre this Friday (28th October) at 3pm.
His talk looks at the problems facing our seabirds, farmland birds and habitats and the possible ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to do something to protect and enhance the birds using our coastline.
Keith told me; “With sea-level rise, expected to rise by over 1m in the next 100 years, we need to look at what we can do to protect and enhance our declining seabirds, farmland birds and local habitats. Individually, we might not be able to do a lot, but collectively we can do a great deal to help”.
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Keith, along with Keyhaven resident Ben Collins are members of the Hurst Spit to Lymington (HS2L) strategy stakeholders group. Keith continued; “From all that we have learned over the past two years from the Environment Agency and NFDC (joint leaders of the strategy) there is a strong desire to work with nature rather than against it. Therefore, I envisage that some hard sea defences (sea walls and protective embankments) will be removed to allow the sea to migrate inland to where it went before man-made barriers were put in its way!
I think it inevitable that managed realignment (sometimes referred to as managed retreat) is likely to be one of the short-listed options the EA and NFDC will favour for the ongoing management of our local coastline. Wildlife will be affected and we need to do something now to pave the way for nature’s recovery.
At the talk I shall be explaining the problems our birds face and some possible solutions that will be quite unique to help save our declining seabirds by the introduction of a ‘seabird sanctuary’ a protected breeding area for our terns, gulls and waders that could be second to none around Britain’s coastline”.
The meeting takes place at 3pm this Friday (28th October) at the Sea Road Community Centre. A £5 entry donation is requested which can be paid at the door which will go towards the hire of the hall and one of Wings ‘Nature Recovery’ projects.
