A bright future

The RSPB’s partnership initiative to take nature conservation into the wider landscape, Greater Thames Futurescapes, is huge, whichever way you to look at it. In terms of area, people, wildlife and commerce, it’s massive.  Over 1000 square km, millions of people, internationally important populations of wintering birds with several major and hundreds of small habitat restoration projects underway and many more planned.

So, how to photograph such a grand scale project given that the 2020VISION orbital imaging satellite is still at the testing stage? This was the challenge facing Paul Harris, Will Bolton and me for the Thames Futurescapes iWitness assignment in November. One piece of the jigsaw at a time obviously.

There is plenty of wildlife in and around the Thames from peregrines and foxes in the city, winter flocks of waders and geese on the mudflats and seal colonies way out on the estuary sandbanks but it’s not easy to photograph. You have to be in the right place at the right time and this often takes research and planning. 2020VISION has a wide enough scope to provide for this but for the 4 day iWitness it would be more productive to stick to people, they are everywhere. Or are they? It turns out that there really wasn’t much going on, and the weather wasn’t helping. I’m told that the collective noun for photographers is a whinge.

Will and I started at Rainham Marshes as there was a guided event scheduled which would provide images of people birdwatching in an urban environment. The reserve is a relatively new centre on a former military firing range bordered by the Thames,  the A13 London to South Essex main road, a high speed rail link and a landfill site. After painting such a rosy scene I should also say it has one of the largest populations of water vole in the country and huge flocks of wintering ducks and waders. All just a stones throw from London. For me the real fascination is the visitor centre which wouldn’t look out of place on Tracy Island. When the reserve closes, shutters slide across the viewing windows and doors to create an impregnable stronghold. I swear it has a drawbridge!

Next stop was the Wallasea Wild Coast project. Project Manager Chris Tyas and PR Guru Hilary Hunter have been hugely supportive of 2020VISION since day one and I wanted to include Wallasea in the iWitness even though things are fairly quiet there with regard to the coastal realignment scheme getting underway. This is one of the big Futurescapes projects. Over the past few hundred years what is currently Wallasea Island has gone from wild saltmarsh to grazing marsh to drained arable land contributing to the 90% loss in saltmarsh habitat in the southeast. Using spoil from the London Crossrail project shipped down the Thames, bunds and islands will be formed and then the sea wall breached to flood the island with sea water forming tidal lagoons and allowing saltmarsh to regenerate.

Will had made arrangements to film at Pitsea Landfill site and I wanted to go too. Handling 800,000 tonnes of our trash per year the Veolia Operated 240 hectare site overlooks the RSPB’s Bowers Marsh project and will itself come under their management when the last bin bag has been buried in 2020. I have always wanted to photograph landfill and so it turns out had Will.

After a site safety induction and resplendent in hi vis and hard hats we were taken out onto the site. I can’t believe how much stuff we chuck away. I didn’t expect to be surprised at the scale of it but I was. An endless stream of trucks chock full of our stuff. Even though the light was awful it was a visually amazing scene as bulldozers pushed and shoved tons of rubbish around surrounded by clouds of gulls swooping in to snatch morsels of anything remotely edible.  At one point I felt a pang of guilt at enjoying myself in the midst of what is essentially an environmental nightmare but the feeling didn’t last. Particularly when I looked over at Will and his “this is so much fun” grin.