LONDON, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of seagrass shoots have been planted in the Thames Estuary as part of a multi-million-pound project to restore the iconic waterway and strengthen its resilience to climate change, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said Thursday.
Conservationists from ZSL, which runs the London Zoo, collected nearly 1,000 cylindrical cores of mud containing dwarf eelgrass shoots from an existing meadow near Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.
The cores were then replanted on mudflats at Egypt Bay in Kent. ZSL told Xinhua that the operation was one of Britain's largest seagrass restoration efforts using this method.
The restored meadow is expected to grow over the next few years to cover an area equivalent to at least one and a half football pitches.
The planting marks the start of fieldwork for "Transforming the Thames," a five-year program led by ZSL and involving 20 conservation, government, research and coastal-management organizations.
The project aims to restore six important habitats across the Greater Thames Estuary, including seagrass meadows, native oyster beds, saltmarshes and coastal grazing marshes. The total restoration area is expected to equal about 450 football pitches by 2030.
"Seagrass meadows are critical to the health of the Thames," said Thea Cox, ZSL's senior restoration manager for the project.
Cox said decades of habitat degradation and fragmentation, together with climate-related storms and marine heatwaves, had placed the estuary under growing pressure.
Seagrass provides nursery grounds for fish, food for birds and shelter for invertebrates. It can also help reduce coastal erosion and protect communities from flooding.
Britain has lost up to 44 percent of its seagrass since 1936 due to pollution, declining water quality and disturbance, according to ZSL.
The wider project is expected to support wildlife, including critically endangered European eels, seahorses and lapwings, while benefiting around 8 million people living along the estuary. ■
