Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay is a large area with a diverse coastal landscape comprising several habitats. Though these may appear to be unrelated to each other, all of them exist today because coastal processes have formed and continue to shape a barrier of extensive shingle beaches and sand dunes across an area of intertidal mud and sand flats. The Site includes the largest and most diverse area of shingle beach in Britain, with low-lying hollows in the shingle providing nationally important saline lagoons, natural freshwater pits and basin fens. Rivers draining the Weald to the north were diverted by the barrier beaches, creating a sheltered saltmarsh and mudflat environment, which was gradually in-filled by sedimentation, and then reclaimed on a piecemeal basis by man. Today this area is still fringed by important intertidal habitats, and contains relict areas of saltmarsh, extensive grazing marshes and reedbeds. Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay is important for breeding, wintering and passage of waterbirds, wetland plants, bryophytes and invertebrates. The Site and adjacent areas are also of national and international importance for a variety of non-wetland habitats and species.