The sea wall at Wallasea Island in Essex has been breached, creating the UK's largest man-made marine wetland.

Defra's Wallasea Wetlands Creation Project is creating the 115 hectare wetland to replace similar bird habitats lost to development during the 1990s.

The wetlands will also improve flood defences, provide for better fish nurseries, and create opportunities for recreation.

Wetlands, including salt marsh and mud flats, are breeding and roosting places for important bird species, as well as habitat for rare plants, insects and fish. They are also breeding and nursery areas for aquatic wildlife, such as bass, mullet, flatfish and herring.

They also act as buffer zones that absorb wave energy and protect the coast from storm damage and flooding.

The project involved the building to new flood defences along the northern bank of the island have been built inland of the shoreline and the current, weaker sea walls have been breached.

A total of 330 metres of existing sea wall were breached on Tuesday in an operation involving around 25 large hydraulic excavators, bulldozers and dump trucks.

The project has created 115 hectares of wetland, including 7 artificial islands, saline lagoons, mudflats, new public footpaths and 4km of sea wall.

It will be used by birds including Brent geese, Oystercatchers, Grey plovers, Dunlins, Shelducks, Curlews, Avocets and Little Terns.

Essex originally had 35,000 hectares of saltmarsh, but enclosure for agriculture and development between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries destroyed much of the habit, leaving only 2,000 hectares left.

Biodiversity Minister Barry Gardiner described the £7.5 million Wallasea project was one of the most significant wetland creation projects in Europe. He said: "At Wallasea we have balanced the needs of wildlife, flood management, landscape and people to recreate some of the ancient wetlands of East Anglia.

"Saltmarsh is more rare than rainforest and is important to people, particularly as a flood and storm defence, and to wildlife. Hundreds of thousands of wetland birds rely entirely on the Essex saltmarsh for their food each winter.

"Wallasea Wetlands will be a wonderful feeding and roosting habitat for birds like Oystercatchers, Avocets and Little Terns, which have been gradually displaced from the area during the last fifty years, as well as creating a haven for other rare wildlife.

"The wetlands will also provide additional flood and storm protection. Damaging storm waves lose their energy as they pass over the area, and the new sea defences will provide better protection than the old ones, which were in very poor condition."

(KMcA)