#677: WWT Welney Reserve and Peter Scott

Another location which will feature in the list of possible places to visit for those schools that choose to offer the new specification and want a fieldtrip or field visit as part of the course, perhaps to draw in some experts, or introduce students to some of the key habitats that the draft subject content has suggested should be the focus for student learning.

Welney was the second reserve created by Sir Peter Scott for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

The first was at Slimbridge in 1946.

Sir Peter Markham Scott was the son of Antarctic explorer Captain Scott who, in his dying letter, urged Peter’s mother to “make the boy interested in natural history”. He was only two years old when his father died

He also helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature, the logo of which he designed, with its panda.

He was also an Olympic medallist - a varied and successful life well-lived.

Welney Reserve is close to where I work in Ely. I have passed the reserve frequently, but only visited a few times.

#433: National Character Areas (NCAs)

Natural England has updated the National Landscape Character assessments on their website.

 Wherever you are in England you are in one of these areas, which has a particular character.

Each NCA represents an area of distinct and recognisable character at the national scale. 

Their boundaries follow natural lines in the landscape, not county or district boundaries. 

This makes them a good framework for decision-making and planning for future change. 

The information contained within the NCA profiles aims to help guide land management and other activities to strengthen character and resilience, responding to pressures such as climate change.

I was born in Area 38: Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield

I studied in Area 37: Yorkshire Southern Pennine Fringe

I trained as a teacher in Area 41: Humber Estuary

My first job was in Area 69: Trent Valley Washlands

The first home I owned was in Area 76: North West Norfolk and my school was on the very edge of Area 46: The Fens

I spent three years working in Area 37 - Yorkshire Southern Pennine Fringe, when I worked for the Geographical Association.

I now live in Area 84: Mid Norfolk, and my current school is in Area 46: The Fens

What numbers have you lived in?

#357: Wicken Fen's 125th birthday

2024 marks the 125th birthday of Wicken Fen: a local nature reserve to me in Cambridgeshire.

Wednesday 1 May 2024 marked 125 years since the National Trust acquired its first two acres of land at Wicken Fen. 

Since 1899, when it became the National Trust's first nature reserve, Wicken Fen has now expanded to over 2,000 acres. Today, it is one of Europe's most important wetlands and home to more than 9,000 species.

#356: Natural History Reading List #19: Fen, Bog and Swamp

One of my favourite books - I have a very nice compact edition with sailing ropes on the spine and cover - is 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx.

A more recent book is 'Fen, Bog and Swamp', subtitled as 'A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis'.

It covers a great deal of ground, and starts with some useful definitions of the distinction between the three terms, which some people might feel can be conflated. 

There are differences between these three landscape (and habitat) types, and the use that people make of them. The index also provides a wealth of links to useful websites.

This Guardian review clearly explains why this should be on the shelf of any GCSE Natural History reading list / departmental library.

"Proulx conjures up the lost landscape, teeming as it was with eels and sturgeon, beavers and water voles, ospreys and cranes and populated by an unmourned fen people who “poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummelled the land edge in storms”. But for all her sadness at the destruction of our wetlands and what she calls “the awfulness of the present”, perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus rightpolitical debate."

We are all complicit in this destruction of the natural world.

My copy was borrowed from the Norfolk Library Service, but I shall be purchasing a copy 

Hardback, 196pp - paperback version now available.

ISBN: 978-0-00-853439-4

#349: Bill Sutherland's Conservation Concepts

A new (to me) YouTube channel features a number of short videos produced by Bill Sutherland.

Each video explores a different ecological concept.

For example, here is a video on Fens.

Notes included:

Fen are groundwater-fed, base-rich habitats. 

They arise where rainwater permeates spongy calcium-rich rocks, resulting in mineral-rich water. Calcium carbonate dissolves to produce bicarbonate, which acts as a pH buffer, keeping the pH neutral. Where the water table in the ground intercepts the ground level the water comes out as springs or seeps into the fen. So fens are wet, ground-fed, base-rich habitats. The seeping water moves slowly so the soil surface has little oxygen- is anaerobic- so the vegetation rots slowly forming peat. This, in turn, means fens are low in the key nutrients of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, as these are locked up in the peat. The calcium can also bind the available phosphorus reducing the fertility further. The fen community includes specialist plants that tolerate low oxygen conditions, calcium carbonate deposits and low nutrient availability. The diversity in geology, hydrology, topology, fertility and disturbance results in a mix of open water, low habitats, dense vegetation and woodland, which provides a huge diversity of habitats and species. Cutting vegetation and grazing no doubt have kept habitats open whilst peat digging has created many habitats we now consider important. Once drained, these well irrigated, base-rich, high organic content soils are attractive for farming. Hence less than 1% of fens remain. The remaining sites are complex to manage. Maintaining the hydrology, water quality and disturbance is key. 

Filmed at Thelnetham Fen, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, reserve.

#305: The Laboratory with Leaves

A documentary on Fenland - part of a series of films.

#246: Ditches

A very nice piece by Melissa Harrison in The Times on the 4th of November 2023 looked at the important role that ditches play in the landscape. This was followed up by a range of tweets on the value of ditches.

There is a tendency to focus on the grand elements of the landscape, but sometimes the smaller overlooked features are just as important for the wildlife that makes them a home: think about the rare ferns and other plants that thrive in the grykes on limestone pavements for example.

Those ditches are bursting with nature! pic.twitter.com/maNLeZiPU8

— Tom Clarke 🇺🇦 🌻 (@Tom_Clarke) April 28, 2023

In the Fens maybe more than anywhere else.

Ditches are our "inverted" hedgerows, and harbour some of the last strongholds for water voles and other critically endangered and red listed species. @FenlandSoil @CLR_Cambridge @NaturalCambs @BrianE_Cambs

— Tom Clarke 🇺🇦 🌻 (@Tom_Clarke) November 4, 2023

 Image: Fenland roads - Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

#216: Wicken Fen- 125th anniversary

2024 marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of Wicken Fen.

From the website:

Before 1899, the Sedge Fen area was home to a thriving sedge-harvesting community, and was frequented by naturalists who delighted in this remnant of undrained fenland. 

In the 19th century, Wicken Fen became popular with Victorian naturalists - while there isn't evidence that Charles Darwin actually visited Wicken, he is known to have collected beetles in the fens in 1820. Later, during the first half of the 20th century, Cambridge botanists Sir Harry Godwin and Dr Arthur Tansley - recognised as the fathers of modern ecology and conservation - carried out cutting-dge studies in the area.

In the late 19th century, with the local sedge and peat industries collapsing, naturalists paid villagers to assist with collecting trips on the Fen, and also bought up land from them. Distinguished entomologist Herbert Goss suggested the National Trust should consider saving Wicken Fen as early as 1898, as it was 'the haunt of much wildlife'. These naturalists then sold or gifted their land at Wicken to the newly-formed National Trust, including J C Moberley whose two acres were sold to the organisation for £10. Other notable donors included George Verrall, MP for Newmarket, who bequesthed 239 acres, on his death in 1911. Banker Charles Rothschild, an early influential figure in nature conservation donated parts of St Edmunds and Adventurers' Fens in 1901.

In 1999 - to mark the 100th anniversary of the first acquisition - the Wicken Fen Vision was launched, a 100-year project that will see the nature reserve expanded from Wicken Fen to the edge of Cambridge. Since 1999, the size of the reserve has more than doubled, for the benefit of wildlife, and for access into green space for people.

Image: © National Trust Images/Rob Coleman

Wicken Fen is very close to Ely, and the school where I work.

#188: Fred Ingrams' Flat Earth

One of my favourite contemporary landscape artists is Fred Ingrams.

He has painted hundreds of colourful representations of The Fens over the years, and others of the Flowlands of Scotland, around Caithness.

The Fens is an area that I will certainly look to write about for any resources that emerge, as an example of a landscape with a particular natural history, which has been shaped in recent centuries by the actions of people.

He has now created a book called Flat Earth. Fred says:

I have been painting the Fens for over a decade, producing around 500 paintings in that period. In some ways I suppose this book can be considered a retrospective. 

I’ve chosen a collection of paintings that I feel have passed the test of time – a showreel of my greatest hits. They do not appear in any particular order and are not chronological. It is my hope that looking at this book feels like wandering through an exhibition of my work.

The hard back book measures 23 x 29cm and is 200 pages long, containing over 100 paintings as well as a foreword by Susan Owens and an introduction written by myself.

I have a copy of a catalogue of a previous exhibition of his paintings which has an excellent introduction by Jonathan Meades. 

A film of Fred at work:

#167: The Great Fen Project

A piece in The Guardian - which seems to be the paper with the best reporting on the environment and nature - on the Great Fen project. It's described as 'a gamechanger'.

The Great Fen project is organised by Wildlife Trust conservationists.

The project has already cost £10m and its price tag could reach £30m by the time it is completed.

The money – which has included an £8m donation from the National Lottery Heritage Fund – is being used to buy large sections of farmland to create a 9,000-acre site around two nature reserves – one at Holme Fen and the other at Woodwalton Fen, the latter being one of the very first wildlife refuges created in the UK . The land will then be transformed by allowing water to return to previously drained fields.

The Great Fen projects hopes to attract rare bird species such as bitterns. Photograph: FLPA/Alamy

A project to follow, and a place to visit perhaps for those schools close to the area. I've been to Holme Fen previously to see the post that was driven into the ground and now stands well proud of it.

#101: The importance of Wetlands

Wetlands will be one of the ecosystems and habitats which are likely to feature in the new specification, perhaps as optional study. The Fens are an area that I am based in for my teaching, so local fieldwork is likely to involve wetlands.

Wetlands — sometimes referred to as the ‘kidneys of the earth’ due to their unique ability to filter out contaminants — are disappearing3️⃣times faster than #forests 💧🌱

Learn more about the value of #wetlands in this infographic by @RamsarConv pic.twitter.com/04aTLPrnhV

— UN Biodiversity (@UNBiodiversity) September 22, 2023

RAMSAR is the convention on Wetlands.

And there are a few more Twitter feeds for our list which we will release as part of the support materials.