Visitors are already arriving in their droves at a wildlife site created from farmland which doubled the size of a Suffolk reserve.

The Princess Royal opened a new visitor centre and nature reserve at Carlton Marshes near Lowestoft in 2021.

The Suffolk Wildlife Trust site - the size of 430 football pitches - is already attracting 100k visitors after its southern gateway opened up the site and made it one of the most accessible reserves in the  country.

The restored space is now home to an astonishing 28 dragonfly species – the highest number found in a single site in Britain – as well as bird species, grazing cattle and ponies.

The trust bought the lower Waveney Valley in late 2015 for £3.15m - its largest ever purchase - in order to create a 1,000 acre wetland habitat.

Trust chief executive Christine Luxton said the transformation took a lot of passion and perseverance as well as inspirational collaboration.

“We had the opportunity to buy the land and that triggered the question: ‘How can we make this work for the town and make Carlton Marshes a nature destination?’,” she said.

In 2018, the National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded a grant of £4.2m to the project while the trust raised more cash through donations from local people and businesses - including £250,000 from New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership’s Growing Places Fund, £100,000 from Essex & Suffolk Water and £1m from legacy gifts.

Eastern Daily Press:

The trust brought water back to the drained fields by digging shallow pools and dykes, shaping earth banks and allowing water levels to rise.

“When pools are created, waders come. In the early stages, lapwings and redshanks arrived, attracted by the newly exposed mud,” said Christine.

"We have occasional surge tides and they require pressure release points. Our reserve can capture that water, so floods can overtop the river wall on to the reed beds rather than on to Oulton Broad.”

Around 4,000 people donated to the trust's visitor centre appeal raising £1m to enable construction to begin.

"It was not just our project. People have been actively part of it all the way through,” she said.

“The LEP funding added to the Heritage funding and having the LEP’s support helped add weight to the economic side of it."

The reserve is now helping the prosperity of the town by bringing in overnight visitors and trust is developing a ‘Broads brand’ to bring in boat moorings.

By 2025, it hopes the site will be recognised as a national nature reserve.