a partnership between

Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust
and Anglian Water

Over the Spring and early Summer Rutland Water Habitats Project has continued to make impressive progress.

Contractors working in the south arm of the reservoir created two extensive lagoons. Thousands of tons of steel and stone have been driven and laid into the bed of the reservoir to build a dam ensuring the lagoons will remain water tight in future years during periods of drawdown.

The dam starts from Wigeon Hide on the Egleton part of the reserve and crosses to the near shoreline before sweeping across the south arm, ending up on the shoreline close to Deep Water Hide.

Water levels will be maintained by a system of tilting weirs and each lagoon can work independently with levels being manipulated to provide the optimum feeding conditions for water birds.

During April a new pipe was laid from Goldeneye Hide to bring water from the reservoir to a further four new lagoons which are now in the process of binge constructedr. During August the final part of the project will see the creation of a series of scrapes, ditches and grips close to lagoon one. The aim will be to provide habitat for breeding waders such as redshank and snipe and ducks such as gadwall, shoveler and garganey.

The images below show how progess has been made up to the middle of June this year.

view of bund across Manton Bay, with construction yard beyond

Heavy Plant machinery at work on one of the new lagoons.

Above and below showing the extensive constructions site from Lax Hill

Lagoon 1 and the Birdwatching Centre beyond a construction phase, view from Lax Hill

View of the scrape and pipe from Golden Eye hide

Removal of Tern Hide

During July, the dismantling of Tern Hide began, in order to make way for the new wetlands in the fields behind the hide. To read about this part of the project and see images of the work involved, click here

Newt Fencing: what's it all about?

Anyone walking on the reserve at the moment will, I’m sure, not fail to see the huge amount of  ugly plastic fencing between the Birdwatching Centre at Egleton and Manton Bay.

This fencing has been erected by ecological consultants in order to catch Great Crested Newts, a species that is protected under schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and also   included within the EC habitats directive. 

The Great Crested Newt has the same legal protection in the UK as the Osprey, a species close to all our hearts, so we  do our upmost to protect them.

The fencing had to be in place before work started on the new Lagoons C1 to C4 and  the arrival of the heavy earth moving machinery!

The way the fencing works is twofold; there is an outer perimeter and a number of smaller sections within that.

The inner sections house a  large number of traps that have been strategically  placed so that as many of the newts in the specified area can be caught and relocated to suitable habitats well away from the construction site

Once the trapping phase is completed the inner sections of fencing can be removed and construction work can progress. The outer sections of fencing  will remain in situ until work is completed. This is to ensure that newts cannot get back into the construction site whilst the machinery is operating. (as if they would!)

View of construction bank behind the existing cycle track, with the newt fencing running alongside the field edge above, and below a close-up of the newt fencing