NWT Upton Broad and Marshes Nature Reserve
This project will enable Norfolk Wildlife Trust to restore, enhance and manage over 186 hectares of grazing marsh and over 100 hectares of fen at NWT's Upton Broad and Marshes nature reserve (SSSI, Ramsar, SAC, SPA), contributing to UK, Regional and Local BAP targets for the priority habitats coastal and floodplain grazing marsh and fen.
NWT Upton Broad and Marshes is located in the Bure Valley Living Landscape (central to Norfolk's ecological network). The site is situated on the southern side of the River Bure and covers over 260 hectares. The southern half of the site contains a wide range of internationally and nationally important open water, calcareous fen, transitional mire and carr woodland.
These habitats support a number of nationally rare and scarce plant species and contain considerable invertebrate interest. The northern half of the site consists of over 150 hectares of traditionally managed grazing marsh, including a network of shallow dykes, some of which are rich in scarce aquatic plants such as water soldier, grass-wrack pondweed, and whorled water milfoil.
The southern area of the site comprises floodplain rich-fen habitat supporting a diverse array of plants and animals including fen orchid, bearded tit, bittern, water vole, swallowtail, Norfolk hawker and diving beetle. The immediate project will firstly enable us to restore lowland wet grazing marsh and dykes to favourable condition, to extend the area and provide the best conditions to encourage increased numbers of breeding waders.
The opportunity to enhance and rehabilitate this habitat is particularly important to mitigate current and impending loss of Norfolk's freshwater coastal grazing marshes (including at NWT nature reserves at Cley and Salthouse) due to the effects of climate change. Secondly, this project will enable us to restore and manage fen in the Upton Doles thereby securing important BAP habitat and species.
Other habitat improvements will include the creation of a 6 metre linear reed berm to connect the reedbed at Upton Broad with associated fen and the River Bure, providing a corridor through which wildlife, particularly water vole and otter (BAP species) can move more easily. Three new turf ponds will also be created, which should quickly provide a rich source of diverse vegetation and attract dragonflies and damselflies, including Norfolk hawker.