Flora and fauna
The Broads are a very important remnant of the wetlands that once dominated much of the East Anglia. A number of species found here are very scarce in the United Kingdom and even found nowhere else.
The birdlife is especially popular with visitors and specialist broad-land species include Bittern, Marsh Harrier and Bearded Tit.
The spectacular yellow and black Swalllowtail Butterfly is found at many locations in The Broads, but nowhere else in the whole of the UK.
Landscape
The Broads largely follows the line of the rivers and natural navigations of the area. There are seven navigable rivers, the River Yare and its direct and indirect tributaries the Rivers Bure, Thurne, Ant, Waveney, Chet and Wensum.
The broads themselves range in size from small pools to the large expanses of Hickling Broad, Barton Broad and Breydon Water. The broads are unevenly distributed, with far more broads in the northern half of Broadland the Rivers Bure, Thurne and Ant than in the central and southern portions the Rivers Yare, Waveney, Chet and Wensum.
Some of the larger broads form nationally important freshwater marshes.
History
For many years the broads were regarded as natural features of the landscape. It was only in the 1960s that Dr Joyce Lambert proved that they were artificial features, the effect of flooding on early peat excavations.
The Romans first exploited the rich peat beds of the area for fuel, and in the Middle Ages the local monasteries began to excavate the peat lands as a business, selling fuel to Norwich and Great Yarmouth. Then the sea levels began to rise, and the pits began to flood. Despite the construction of windpumps and dykes, the flooding continued and resulted in the typical Broads landscape of today, with its reed beds, grazing marshes and wet woodland.