Kent Wildlife Trust : the leading active conservation charity in Kent

Camber Castle and sheep © B Yates

The unique landscape of the Romney Marshes, the Rother and its tributaries is identified in the South East Plan and the 50 Year Vision for Wetlands as one of the areas of greatest regional-scale potential for enhancement, restoration and re-creation of wetland habitats.

The Romney Marshes Living Landscape Partnership has come together to realise that potential, to deliver major benefits to wildlife and to enhance and promote sustainable tourism, support the farming economy, and involve and engage local communities.

A landscape scale approach

Our natural environment has become increasingly fragmented, with high quality habitat for wildlife often reduced to isolated patches separated by roads, urban development and intensive farmland. This is bad news for wildlife, as isolated populations are more vulnerable to gradual changes in the environment and to catastrophic events like storms and drought. It is bad news for people too, as we are dependent on the natural environment for many things, including clean air and water, soil to grow our crops in and areas to store floodwater.

There are many reasons to try and reduce habitat fragmentation and improve, connect and extend wildlife-rich areas:

• most species need to be able to move through the landscape in response to changing conditions in the environment. As well as enabling populations of the same species to colonise new areas, it increases their genetic diversity and their resilience to disease and limits the chances of the population dying out.
• nature reserves can help to protect some species, but not ones which thrive in the wider landscape (the house sparrow and water vole are good examples).
• a high quality natural environment contributes to people's health, wellbeing and quality of life.
• large wildlife-rich areas can be a huge economic asset to an area: for example, they can boost tourism levels and provide ecosystem services such as crop pollination.
• the climate is changing and will bring changing weather patterns, sea level rise and an increased risk of flooding. Large and connected areas of coastal, marsh and estuarine land which are able to 'absorb' excess water can help to mitigate those effects.