Britain's New Wildlife Reserve
Farmland to be Flooded to Help Species Recover
The Great Fen Project will ultimately mean the flooding of 3700 acres of land to create a wildlife haven between the rapidly expanding Cathedral city of Peterborough and the market town of Huntingdon, birthplace of Oliver Cromwell.
The move is a reversal of the great reclamation projects that dried out the East Anglian Fens – thousands of square miles around the marshy inlet of the North Sea called The Wash – from Roman times to the seventeenth century.
The new area, visible from trains travelling on the East Coast Main Line just south of Peterborough, will be created on land next to and between the existing and thriving nature reserves of Home Fen and Woodwalton Fen to create a huge new wildlife and leisure area.
Conservation and Tourism
The idea is to combine nature conservation and management with tourism and other activities which will generate cash to help support the project. It will also help store flood-water to help protect local low-lying farmland.
High-profile wildlife TV presenter Nigel Marven and polymath actor/writer/presenter Stephen Fry are already involved.
The project is being organised by the Environment Agency, Huntingdonshire District Council (the local authority), Middle Level Commissioners (who administer this part of the Fens) and wildlife campaigners Natural England and the Wildlife Trust.
The project covers an area in the north west corner of the county of Cambridgeshire, once the separate county of Huntingdonshire, which campaigners say has less than the UK national average number of such sites – called Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
Similar wildlife havens have been developed in the polders of the Netherlands, the landscape of which was created by many of the same engineers who organised the present appearance of the Fens, including the greatest fen drainage engineer of them all, Vermuyden.
Rare Plants and Animals
Visitors to the existing Woodwalton reserve can see rare plants and animals in habitats including purple moor grass meadows, tall fen and scrub areas, woodland, and areas with other grasses, sedges, herbs and mosses. The site supports rare invertebrates and two very rare plants, Fen Violet and Fen Woodrush. The first is found in only two other places in Britain and the second is unique to the Great Fen area. Holme Fen, meanwhile, is the largest silver birch woodland in lowland Britain – right next to the main East Coast railway line. It also contains rare acid grassland and heath and a section of remaining raised bog, a reminder of what the area would have looked like before the large-scale drainage began.
Specialists claim that many species of plants and animals have been brought to the brink of extinction by the centuries of fenland drainage, and some species found on the two existing reserves are the few survivors of once widespread populations. Landscape and wildlife organisation English Nature, recently renamed Natural England, started a Species Recovery Programme in 1991 and the Great Fen Project follows on from that.
The East Anglian Fens
Hundreds of years ago the area was an almost impenetrable expanse of wetlands and slow-moving, meandering rivers and streams. It did, however, provide a bountiful source of food and natural resources for local people. When the most extensive of the drainage plans took hold in the 17th century the Fens became one of the most prosperous areas in England. But much of the drainage was carried out against the will of local people by entrepreneurs and landowners, in particularly the Bedford family.
The East Anglian fens cover more than 380,000 hectares from southern Lincolnshire in an arc to the east of Peterborough, almost as far south as Cambridge and then further east to the uplands of Norfolk. Centuries ago the area was a mysterious malaria-invested swamp into which only local fisherman and reed-cutters went, together with the intrepid monks who developed the area’s five famous monasteries of Peterborough, Ely, Crowland, Thorney and Ramsey. The Romans began the draining of the area, but only managed a narrow strip of land around the upland borders. The era of the mass draining was the 17th century.
The Fens now require constant draining and straight “rivers” – some with names like Forty Foot Drain and Hundred Foot Drain, the latter also known as the New Bedford River – take riverwater from its natural course in the western uplands, across the fenland to the sea. Pumping stations, locks and weirs control the water levels and prevent unplanned flooding.
Since the beginning of the last and greatest phase of drainage of the fenland areas – mostly carried out under the supervision or inspiration of Vermuyden which explains why this part of eastern England and most of the Netherlands are almost identical in appearance – campaigners say 99% of the old wetland has been lost. That is great for food production, but disastrous for wildlife.
Farming is facing a problem, however. The peat which forms the mainstay of the area’s agricultural riches is shrinking, at 2cm a year since 1970, and this means farming in the area will have to abandon the lucrative root vegetables of the past in favour of less valuable wheat and barley, so the loss of land for the Great Fen Project is not so serious from an agricultural point of view.
Alterations have already been made to Woodwalton and Holme Fen to help both the wildlife and visitors and the next stage of the Great Fen project is to discuss the joining-up of the two with local communities and farmers and beginning to negotiate the purchase of land. Once all the land is acquired, visitor facilities will be developed.
Part of Woodwalton Fen
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