TELEVISION'S favourite birdwatcher Bill Oddie visited Medway to announce that the RSPB has secured Cliffe Pools as a major new nature reserve. The area, set in the wildlife rich North Kent marshes near Rochester, has long been known to birdwatchers for its important number of wading birds and wildfowl.

The site holds an incredible 10 per cent of all the nation's saline lagoons - rare coastal habitats containing a diverse community of wildlife. But plans had existed to completely fill the pools which would have destroyed their wildlife value.

Campaigns have been running for more than 20 years to protect the site and management plans for the reserve were drawn up and agreed nine years ago. For the last six years the Cliffe Project, a consortium of land owners, agencies and interest groups chaired by Medway Council and with Bill Oddie as it's patron, have worked to save the area. Legal problems dogged the purchase - until now.

Bill said: "It's a very special day for me and quite emotional. I will definitely come back. I have been coming here since the 1960s. For 40 to 50 years it has been a good place to see birds and aquatic animals.

"It would have been a travesty if it had not become a reserve. I was delighted when I received the fax telling me that we'd got it."