page_title: RSPB Minsmere
section_title: Management
hierarchical_section_title: RSPB Minsmere / Management
caption_attribution_description: English: Minsmere Bird Sanctuary. The Koniks are just a few metres away from the wetland and keep the grass short for plovers and similar birds
context_page_description: RSPB Minsmere is a nature reserve owned and managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at Minsmere, Suffolk. The 1,000-hectare site has been managed by the RSPB since 1947 and covers areas of reed bed, lowland heath, acid grassland, wet grassland, woodland and shingle vegetation. It lies within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Suffolk Heritage Coast area. It is conserved as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area and Ramsar site.
  The nature reserve is managed primarily for bird conservation, particularly through control and improvement of wetland, heath and grassland habitats, with particular emphasis on encouraging nationally uncommon breeding species such as the bittern, stone-curlew, marsh harrier, nightjar and nightingale. The diversity of habitats has also led to a wide variety of other animals and plants being recorded on the site.
  Before becoming a nature reserve, the area was the site of an ancient abbey and a Tudor artillery battery.
context_section_description: The main management objectives at Minsmere are to maintain and improve the wetland, heath and grassland habitats. Water levels are managed using a system of sluices, surplus water eventually flowing into the sea at the main sluice on the New Cut. The sluices also keep seawater out of the reed beds, allowing control of salinity in the scrape. Vegetation is removed from the lagoons annually, and sections of the scrape are dried out and re-flooded on a five-year rotation. The scrape is protected from predators by an electric fence, improved in 2014 and 2015 when it was realised that badgers were attacking ground-nesting birds. The reed beds are grazed by Konik horses and Highland cattle while they are drained; this helps maintain the boundary between reed beds and open water areas. This control of reed density provides open water feeding pools for bitterns within the reed beds. The grazing regime was instituted following investigations into similar schemes in Sweden and Denmark.
  The heathland and acidic grassland areas of Minsmere are managed by grazing, heather and scrub control and removal of trees and unwanted western gorse. The areas of gorse and scrub remaining are cut in rotation to keep the gorse short and dense, providing a scrub structure optimal for nightingales. In 1989, 158 hectares (390 acres) of arable land were purchased in a project to recreate lowland heath and acidic grassland habitat by acidification of the soil, the aim being to join fragmented patches of heathland together and to provide increased habitat for the stone-curlew, woodlark and nightjar, three threatened bird species. Methods used to acidify the land, which had been arable farmland for 150 years, included grazing by sheep or the addition of sulphur, either with bracken and heather waste, or on its own, followed by reseeding.
caption: Konik horses grazing the reserve
exif: {}