Environmental groups are celebrating after bringing local wildlife back to Hackney Marshes following the erosion of habitats in recent years. Kestrels, weasels, shrews, wood mice and other small mammals had been slowly disappearing from around the River Lea until hundreds of volunteers began rebuilding their ecosystems with piles of logs, artificial food caches and by selectively cutting trees or ‘coppicing’.
Ian Phillips, an ecologist who has helped lead the river restoration project over three years, was jubilant at the quick results. “It feels like it happened almost overnight. It was just absolutely amazing to see everything fall into place,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
With funding from Hackney Council, the Environment Agency and the Mayor of London, the biodiversity scheme was undertaken by groups such as ReNature London, Wildlife Gardeners of Haggerston (WGH) and Save Lea Marshes. Phillips said restoring the mammals’ natural surroundings had become urgent after the disappearance of wood mice caused a domino effect of weasels leaving the habitation, in turn impacting the local kestrel population.
“It’s like a classic sort of Jenga – if you pull the wrong piece out of the local ecosystem, everything collapses. “Three years ago, we realised we were at an absolute crunch point. So we took it upon ourselves to do something.”. Driving this exodus of local wildlife were larger numbers of visitors trampling over the terrain, but also houseboaters taking logs from the area to use for firewood – alongside the so-called ‘Hackney Beach’ river parties during the pandemic.
While these gatherings made headlines, the ensuing loud noise and log burning caused great disturbance to local species, prompting kingfishers and little owls to abandon their nests, Phillips added. A spike in dog ownership during lockdown also saw a rising threat to the marshes’ mammals.
“It became quite grim for the wildlife. A couple of days ago we counted someone with 16 dogs, and when you’ve got probably upwards of 3,000 dogs coming through here a day sometimes, there are going to be casualties.”. Gideon Corby, lead ecologist for the Old Lea River Restoration project, said rewilding would have been impossible without the backing of London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the Town Hall.
“When I was writing the funding application, I didn’t imagine that we would be surveying so many wood mice, voles and shrews and watching an unlucky one get snatched by a kestrel just feet away,” he told the LDRS. “In the midst of our biodiversity crisis, this project shows what can be done with local knowledge and dedication in partnership with the council.”.
The rewilders’ work does not stop here, as they hope to expand their efforts across the borough into Millfields Park and London Fields. They are also actively training council staff to help them recover species in the wider area. Meanwhile, the Town Hall has given them the “green light” to introduce other species like common lizards and slow worms into the Marshes.
