52 Time September 23, 2019
A
voceTs, Terns and gulls swoop down onTo wallasea
Island on England’s eastern coast, searching for food between
blades of grass ruffled by the summer sea breeze. Aside from
the wind, and the odd chirp or squawk, it’s quiet—the kind of
peaceful scene that seems like it’s been going on for centuries.
Yet five years ago, these wetlands didn’t exist.
The mud the birds have landed on once lay under the streets
of central London. In 2015, as part of a railway project, a con-
struction crew scooped more than 3 million metric tons of dirt out from beneath the
capital, drove it 50 miles east and piled it onto farmland on the coastline of the county
of Essex. In summer 2019, a crane hoisted old heavy machinery out of the water, re-
moving the last vestiges of human interference.
Wallasea is the largest restored coastal wetland in Europe, an exemplar of a grow-
ing movement to “rewild” land and return it to the way it was before humans began
exploiting it millennia ago. It’s good for the birds. But it’s also increasingly understood
as crucial for ensuring a world hospitable to people. As water sloshes in and out of
Wallasea’s restored mudflats and salt marshes, carbon dioxide that could otherwiseA project to
build a network
of salt marshes,
grasslands
and lagoons on
Wallasea Island on
England’s eastern
coast is due for
completion in
OctoberEUROPE
1910s 0.33°Difference
in Europe’s
average
temperature (°C)
by decade,
relative to a
1910–2000
average1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s0.23°
0.14°
0.15°
0.02°
0.04°
0.03°
0.02°
0.52°
1.05°
1.35°
Fifty miles east of London, a stretch of
reclaimed land holds a key to our future
By Ciara Nugent/Wallasea Island, U.K.Take aWalk on theRewildingSide