MORE than 60 acres of nature reserve on the Suffolk coast are to be abandoned to the North Sea.

The Environment Agency will on Friday reveal plans to “withdraw maintenance” from an earth bank which protects part of the internationally important Minsmere nature reserve, between Dunwich and Sizewell.

Dunes protecting the bank have been severely eroded in recent years and officials believe that spending further money in trying to shore-up the defence cannot be justified – because the sea would soon break through.

It will mean that more than 60 acres freshwater marsh at RSPB Minsmere, used by the rare bittern as well as marsh harriers, bearded tits and otters, will become more vulnerable to saltwater flooding.

While it does not believe that continued maintenance of the wall is economically or environmentally sustainable, the Environment Agency is also proposing to spend £1million in raising the height of another wall, known as Coney Wall or North Wall, which runs east west from the beach towards the Minsmere visitors centre.

This wall protects the most important part of Minsmere – an area of more than 750 acres of freshwater habitat which is the main feeding and breeding ground of the bittern and many other species of bird. Agency officials believe that maintenance of this wall will protect the area for at least 50 years.

However, both the agency and the RSPB acknowledge that much of Minsmere will be lost to the sea in the long term and the search has already started for compensatory habitat further inland. The Environment Agency is obliged under European Union law to replace such habitat.

The agency’s “preferred option” for sea defence in the area – the culmination of five years work – is to go on public display at Leiston on Friday and people will have three months to give their response.

Stuart Barbrook, the agency’s project manager, said yesterday that a range of options had been examined for defending the area over the next 100 years. The RSPB, the National Trust, which owns Dunwich Heath to the north, and British Energy, owner of most of the Sizewell nuclear site to the south, had been consulted.

Among the options had been the construction of off-shore reefs and beach groynes – work which would cost many millions of pounds.

A “do nothing” option would mean that the whole of the Minsmere reserve would be at risk of saltwater flooding, Mr Barbrook said.

Studies had shown that the most economically and environmentally sustainable option was to withdraw maintenance from the primary, beach-side wall and raise the height of a secondary wall, known as the Coney Bank.

This would protect the area known as the Minsmere levels, low-lying marshland between Dunwich heath and the Sizewell nuclear site – at least for 50 years.

“During the last two winters there has been considerable damage at the north end of the Minsmere site. The dunes have taken a battering and have been breached. It is a real pressure point. Our preferred option means we are working more in line with nature,” Mr Barbrook said.

Ian Barthorpe, RSPB spokesman, said: “We support the scheme. Our view is that while we’d like to protect valuable habitats where feasible we accept than within 20 years this wall is likely to go.”

The RSPB was working with the Environment Agency to identify alternative sites. Removal of maintenance in front of the North Marsh would mean the habitat would change as a result of saltwater incursion. But it would still be of value to wildlife on a coast where good marshland habitat is increasingly scarce.

The exhibition about the agency’s preferred sea defence option is being held in the Sizewell Sports and Social Club, on the outskirts of Leiston, on Friday between 2.30 pm and 7 pm.

Campaigners in the Blyth Estuary are protesting over Environment Agency plans to withdraw maintenance of earth banks protecting farmland and up to 40 isolated homes.

A High Court case over the future of DIY sea defences at Easton Bavents, north of Southwold, continued yesterday.

Story in the East Anglian Daily Times