Last night's re-reading: 'The Thames transformed (1976).
Co-authored by birding legend Peter Grant, it has a large section on Medway wildfowl.
Which records cooperation between birders and wildfowlers 'pre-WeBS'- how they helped save the southern Medway...

1/5

At the end of the 1960s the southern Medway was threatened by a Government plan to redevelop the estuary. Areas such as Ham Green and Chetney would have disappeared, becoming ports, power stations and hosting heavy industry...

2/5

Local wildfowlers and birders had already been cooperating on surveys for decades, ensuring data available to have threat to southern Medway on agenda of the 1st International Conference of the Ramsar Convention- which then pressed UK Govt not to destroy the Medway...

3/5

Birders and wildfowlers such as Peter Grant and co-author Jeffery Harrison appreciated the need for cooperation in conserving wetlands such as the north Kent marshes. And nowadays all-too easy to forget what was achieved...

4/5

Why when out on the southern Medway if birders start sounding off to me about wildfowlers, I try to explain history/complexities here and to consider whether southern Medway would still exist had not wildfowlers and birders been able to work so well together in the past.

5/5