Brandon Marsh
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
East Marsh Pool with Willow Island in the foreground, July 2009
|
|
| Area of Search | Warwickshire |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | SP386762 |
| Interest | Biological |
| Area | 92 hectares |
| Notification | 1973 |
Brandon Marsh is an Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and nature reserve in Warwickshire, England. It is situated adjacent to the River Avon, near the village of Brandon, a few miles east of Coventry.
The reserve is also the headquarters of the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. Formerly used for sand and gravel quarrying, the 92 hectare (228 acre) site is owned by French industrial company LaFarge Industries and is leased to the Trust.
Today, Brandon Marsh is a mixture of flooded gravel pits, fen, scrubland, reedbeds and woodland, much of which is uncommon habitat for the local area. The site is particularly important for birdlife, with a wide range of breeding and wintering birds—234 different species had been recorded up to the end of 2015. The reserve also supports a variety of mammals and insects, over 500 species of plant, and more than 570 species of fungi. The nature reserve and Visitor Centre are open to the public seven days a week.
Although the landscape features of the site are mainly derived from gravel pits and settling pools alongside the River Avon, the area was originally farmland, and the first pools were created by mining subsidence in the 1940s and 1950s caused by workings at Binley Colliery. The site was of interest to local naturalists for its range of bird life, especially as by 1959 the area of open water was far larger than it is now, although much was lost when Severn Trent Water dredged it in 1963. Shortly afterwards the first official attempts at using the site for conservation purposes came when the West Midlands Trust for Nature Conservation, supported by the West Midland Bird Club began moves to secure the site as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The Brandon Marsh Conservation Group was formed in 1968, and by 1973 the site had been confirmed as an SSSI. In 1981, the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (the successor to the West Midlands Trust) came to an agreement with Lafarge whereby the site is leased for a period of 99 years at a peppercorn amount of £1 a year, leading to the creation of the nature reserve.
...
Wikipedia