River Tamar allowed to flood farmland to help wildlife and climate

Project to reverse Victorian-era reclamation creates rich, marshy land that can lock in carbon

The herons and little egrets have already begun to hunt in the muddy shallows and the hope is that within a few years, rarer wading birds such as curlew and mammals including otters and harvest mice will appear.

But the project to allow river water from the Tamar, the iconic boundary between Devon and Cornwall, back on to a chunk of land that was turned into farmland in Victorian times, is about much more than attracting wildlife.