It is home to the busiest tourist resort in Britain, yet also contains a National Nature Reserve, which is the most important site in the UK for wintering wildfowl.

The reserve occupies over half of the total area of the Ribble Estuary, including extensive areas of mud and sandflats and one of the largest single areas of saltmarsh in England.

Over 700 cattle and sheep are grazed on the saltmarsh in order to maintain the short sword on which the wintering wildfowl depend, forming one of the largest single herds of cattle in the UK.

In the summer the saltmarshes support large numbers of breeding birds such as the Black Headed Gull, Herring Gull, Lesser Black-Backed Gull, Common Tern and Redshank. Skylark, Meadow Pipit and Linnet nest in significant numbers on the grazing marsh.

The reserve has also been declared a Ramsar site and Special Protection Area (SPA), providing an important link in the chain of wetland sites in Western Europe. It supports over 100,000 ducks, geese and swans, in winter the site is home to around 150,000 waders and it is an internationally important refuge for 16 bird species.

A camera in the Ribble Discovery Centre at Granny’s Bay provides a ‘window on the estuary’ whilst viewing hides at Marshside allow visitors to see the wildlife at close quarters.