VOLUNTEERS were in action on a Suffolk beach yesterday - picking up litter and erecting fencing around a site used for nesting by little terns.

David Green

VOLUNTEERS were in action on a Suffolk beach yesterday - picking up litter and erecting fencing around a site used for nesting by little terns.

The volunteers, mainly local WI members, cleared litter from Dunwich beach, along the border of the National Nature Reserve .

They were joined by Suffolk Wildlife Trust staff who also erected temporary fencing to protect the nesting site from humans, dogs and foxes.

The beach clean-up, supported by the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Unit, came during the Suffolk Spring Clean Fortnight, which ends on April 13, and in the run-up to publication of the Marine Conservation Society's latest National BeachWatch report.

Lynn Allen, Suffolk Coast and Heaths's countryside manager, said plastic waste on beaches was a perennial problem which could be fatal to ground nesting species such as the little tern and other marine wildlife.

“Autopsies carried out by the MCS on fulmars in the North Sea found an average of 40-50 pieces of plastic inside their stomachs. Worldwide there is an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic litter per square mile of ocean and globally over one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year because of plastic litter alone,” she said.