The Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project: Working with Nature and People at a Landscape-scale

The Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project is the RSPB’s ‘flagship’ marine wetland restoration initiative and the most ambitious coastal environmental project in Europe. It is taking place on Wallasea Island at the confluence of the Crouch and Roach Estuaries near to Rochford in Essex (see Figure 1) and will involve a ‘Managed Realignment’ of the island’s coastal defences.

Managed Realignment is pursued, where appropriate, along flood-sensitive coastlines where there are often deteriorating and vulnerable seawalls. It typically involves the construction of new, higher quality, seawalls setback from the old defences. These old defences are then breached to allow controlled tidal flooding of the land between the two walls. This creates new shoreline habitat and substantially improves the levels of coastal flood protection to hinterland properties.