The Port 2000 container port was built starting 2002 and had its first commercial operations in April 2006. It was meant to position Le Havre as a main gateway for containerised goods. It also provided the opportunity to initiate environmental restoration of the Seine Estuary with a budget of approximately 50 million EUR.

All the different environmental works were initiated after the official public debates on the whole project were conducted in 1997-1998. They involved discussions with numerous stakeholders which continued after the end of the debate. In these discussions, Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and ornithologists expressed a major need for high tide bird resting area in the Seine outer Estuary. As there were also large amounts of dredged sediments available from the building of the port, it was decided to build an artificial island for that purpose in the south of the estuary.

To facilitate this development, a working session bringing together representatives of the Groupe Ornithologique Nor- mand (Normandy Ornithological Society), the Maison de l’Estuaire (Estuary House, NGO in charge of the management of the Seine Estuary Nature Reserve), the Regional administration in charge of Environment, and engineers from the Port of Rouen and Le Havre was held in year 2000. After explaining the objectives and obligations of each participant, a joint design was made that met both the ornithological demands as well as the engineering constraints of building such an island near to the open sea.

The body of the island was made up of sand and gravel materials and its most exposed parts were protected by an armour consisting of hard rock-fills. In all, around 57,000 tonnes of hard rock and 545,000 tonnes of sand and gravel coming from the Port 2000 access channel dredging were put in place during the period from October 2004 to April 2005. It is interesting to notice that the bird island was ‘put into operation’ well before the port itself.

As the work site was only accessible by sea (from the mid-tide owing to the admissible draught on site), great attention had to be paid to the work schedule as all logistics (transport, staff changes, tipping operations, topography) was totally dependent of tides. Due to that, and the numerous curves of the island, its embankments with different slopes and its rather small surface (200 x 325 m), the construction of the rest place was a real challenge.