page_title: Cley Marshes
section_title: Threats
hierarchical_section_title: Cley Marshes / Threats
caption_attribution_description: English: Cley Shingle Bank is fast eroding Big tides and a north wind caused lots of erosion to the Cley shingle bank in March 2007.
context_page_description: Cley Marshes is a 176-hectare nature reserve on the North Sea coast of England just outside the village of Cley next the Sea, Norfolk. A reserve since 1926, it is the oldest of the reserves belonging to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which is itself the oldest county Wildlife Trust in the United Kingdom. Cley Marshes protects an area of reed beds, freshwater marsh, pools and wet meadows and is part of the North Norfolk Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area, and Ramsar Site due to the large numbers of birds it attracts.
  The reserve is important for some scarce breeding species, such as pied avocets on the islands, and western marsh harriers, Eurasian bitterns and bearded reedlings in the reeds, and is also a major migration stopoff and wintering site. There are also several nationally or locally scarce invertebrates and plants specialised for this coastal habitat. It has five bird hides and an environmentally friendly visitor centre and further expansion is planned through the acquisition of neighbouring land and improvements to visitor facilities.
context_section_description: The reserve shelters behind a ridge of shingle that runs west from Weybourne along the Norfolk coast, before becoming a spit extending into the sea at Blakeney Point. Saltmarshes can develop behind the shingle, but the sea attacks the ridge and spit through tidal and storm action. The amount of shingle moved by a single storm can be "spectacular"; the spit has sometimes been breached, becoming an island for a time, and this may happen again. The northernmost part of nearby Blakeney was lost to the sea in the early Middle Ages, probably due to a storm.
  The spit is moving towards the mainland at about 1 m per year, and for the last two hundred years maps have been accurate enough for the encroachment of the sea to be quantified. Blakeney Chapel, just west of the reserve, was 400 m (440 yd) from the sea in 1817, but this had reduced to 195 m (215 yd) by the end of the twentieth century. The landward movement of the shingle also means that the channel of the River Glaven becomes blocked increasingly often, leading to flooding of the reserve and Cley village. The Environment Agency considered a number of remedial options to protect these vulnerable areas, and a new route for the river to the south of its original line was completed in 2007 at a cost of about £1.5 million.
  The sea defences at Cley were badly breached in 1742, 1897, 1953 and 1996, with smaller incursions in 1993 and 1998. The massive 1953 flood reached 8 km (4 mi) inland at Cley. A 2 m (6 ft) storm surge in December 2013 flooded much of the English east coast, and  breached the shingle ridge at Cley, flooding the reserve and damaging or destroying the hides. Restoration of the reserve was assisted by Natural England, and the removal of salt was helped by natural freshwater springs. As of 2015, the reserve was fully restored and functioning.
  Although the financial benefits from the recreational value of the reserve currently outweigh the costs of maintaining the sea defences, managed retreat is likely to be the long-term solution to rising sea levels at Cley and along much of the rest of the North Norfolk coast, and has already been implemented at other major sites including Titchwell Marsh. The important reedbeds at Cley will inevitably be lost due to increased saltwater flow into the marshes. To compensate, the Environment Agency and the Norfolk Wildlife Trust have been working since 2010 to make a new wetland near Hilgay. The 60-hectare (150-acre) Hilgay Wetland Creation Project is converting former farmland into a variety of wetland habitats by using banks, ditches and a lake to manage water levels. The Trust sees this as the first stage of a long-term plan to create a roughly 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) Wissey Living Landscape.
caption: The shingle ridge is moving southwards through the marshes.
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