The Broads

The Broads was established in 1989 in Norfolk and Suffolk, in eastern England, and protects some 303 km². Its legal status is not exactly that of a national park but an equivalent one, with an authority of its own created by a specific act that adds the protection of navigation interests to the usual objectives.

Its origin is purely human and was discovered surprisingly late: until the mid-twentieth century the broads were believed to be natural lakes, until research showed that they are medieval peat diggings, worked between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries for fuel in a region without woodland, and that they flooded afterwards as sea and groundwater levels rose. The vertical cuts of their beds and the remains of structures confirmed the finding.

The result is a network of shallow lakes connected by slow rivers, with extensive reedbeds, sedge beds, wet meadows and carr woodland, which constitutes one of the most important wetlands in the United Kingdom. It is home to the British swallowtail butterfly, a subspecies exclusive to this district, along with bittern, marsh harrier, otter and an invertebrate community of great value. Recreational boating is intense and is at once the district's economic mainstay and its main pressure, along with eutrophication and the saline intrusion that rising sea level is aggravating.