Dart Harbour: The Saltmarsh Project

This is a joint project, funded by the Environment Agency, led by Bioregional Learning Centre, South Devon National Landscape and Dart Harbour, with the support of Devon Wildlife Trust, Duchy of Cornwall, Parklife, Devon Biodiversity Records Centre, 5Rivers and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology amongst other organisations and landowners.

Further information on this project can be found at https://www.dartharbour.org/the-saltmarsh-project/

To date we have:

• Surveyed various sites on the river including on-ground naturalist surveys and LIDAR.
• Installed hundreds of brushwood bundles to block gullies and protect the banks of the saltmarshes from erosion
• Built a new boardwalk to protect a marsh from erosion and better allow the public to see it
• Removed a sluice to allow salt inundation of a site.
• Provided information boards
• arranged for various marshes to be designated as county wildlife sites

We also plan to

• restore a crumbling drystone wall to protect another marsh from erosion
• restore a large area of saltmarsh which has mainly disappeared
• fix leaky dams upstream in stream, to help mitigate flooding and manage sediments
• seed bomb areas of struggling marsh