The RSPB has launched a landmark conservation and engineering initiative to restore the South Essex coastline.

The Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project aims to re-establish the wild coast landscape by returning a large area of arable farmland at Wallasea Island back to coastal marshland in order to provide a wetland mosaic of mudflats and salt marshes, shallow lagoons and pastures, criss-crossed by low-lying bunds for nine miles (15km) of visitor access ways for activities such as bird watching, walking, cycling, painting or photography.

Over the next two years, the RSPB and specialist contractors will carry out detailed design and engineering studies likely to cost around £500,000, with a further £12m being required to secure the land and create the new landscape.

The intertidal marshland on the Essex coast has reduced from 30,000 hectares to just 2,500 hectares over the last 400 years owing to erosion. This rate is likely to accelerate with climate change as rising sea levels and storms steadily erode the fundamental transition zone between the land and the sea.