Lunt Meadows nature reserve in Merseyside sits alongside the River Alt. Once intensively managed farmland, the area and communities around Lunt Meadows were prone to significant flooding. That was until the Environment Agency bought the land in 2010 to create a flood storage basin, providing a much-needed place for flood waters to be safely stored before being released slowly downstream once the peak water flows had passed. 

Now, not only is Lunt Meadows helping to naturally alleviate flood risk, but it is also managed as a wonderful wetland nature reserve, home to a huge variety of wildlife and a mosaic of different habitats, everything from wet and dry grasslands to lakes, reedbeds and fen. But being a relatively young site it is still growing and adapting and requires regular management to keep it functioning as both a boon to wildlife and to provide a natural flood mitigation solution.  

Why does reedbed need to be managed? 

This will not only help to ensure that the floodwaters from the river are going where they are supposed to, but it will actually help stop some parts of the Lunt Meadows itself from flooding, as the water will be where it was supposed to be, hopefully stopping as many paths from being closed during flood events as possible. 

How will the work benefit wildlife? 

Reedbeds are an amazing habitat for a huge array of wildlife, including the endangered bittern that nests and hunts amongst the reeds, and can often be spotted at Lunt Meadows. The funding will also allow for some current areas of reedbed which have become overgrown to be cut back and managed, and some existing ditches to be reprofiled to encourage further reedbed growth. The total area of reedbed at Lunt Meadows will be increased by a fantastic 1.5 hectares. 

How do reedbeds benefit the environment? 

Not only do reedbeds provide an important habitat for wildlife, but they also act as natural water filters. As water flows through a reedbed it is naturally slowed down, this allows silt and sediment to drop to the base of the reedbed, leaving the water naturally cleaner. Reeds also have the ability to safely absorb unwanted chemical and nutrients from water, whilst some of the thousands of natural microorganisms that live in and around the plant's roots can also biologically breakdown unwanted elements. 

This can mean that not only is flood water safely stored in Lunt Meadows, but when it is returned to the river it can actually be cleaner than it was before.

Educational reedbeds 

A second phase of the reedbed renovation project at Lunt Meadows will see a whole new area of ‘polishing’ reedbed created next to the Learning Centre building. This will take wastewater from the building itself and give it a final clean (the water will undergo an initial cleaning process before leaving the building’s wastewater system) before it enters the main ditch network on site. 

The location of this reedbed makes it ideal to be used as part of the education resource at Lunt Meadows, allowing people to see a reedbed and its actions up close, helping to promote sustainable development practices and increase community engagement in the site. 

This work has been funded by Veolia Environmental Trust through the Landfill Communities Fund.