Aaron Howe, RSPB
A wetland utopia at Hollesley, Suffolk Figure 1. Hollesley Marshes wetland habitat design.
The Wadden Sea islands in the Netherlands are remarkable for both migrant and breeding birds. Texel, at the southern end of the chain, is perhaps the best known of the islands and has high levels of conservation management. In 2010, the Dutch conservation organisation Natuurmonumenten created a new nature
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THE HAR R I ER – S u mme r 2 0 1 5
reserve on Texel at Utopia Farm. The reserve is a 28ha brackish lagoon behind the seawall adjacent to the Wadden Sea. Formerly a grass field under agriculture, the land was excavated to create a series of islands in a shallowly flooded lagoon. Around 84,000 m3 of soil was removed and 2,000 m3 of cockle
