Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
interest, being ultimately managed by a tenant farmer and having public access. Im-
portantly, much of the restoration was determined by local people through their
elected parish council.
The Drainage of the Great Wetlands
South Yorkshire's lowland fen was once 1,900 square miles (3,000 km
2
) of bogs, fens,
and carrs—an area teeming with wildlife, including hundreds of thousands of birds
(De La Pryme 1870). These wetlands provided fish, reed and rushes (for thatching,
flooring, and candles), peat fuel, brushwood from the carrs for fuel and light con-
structional work, and pasture for cattle. They were important hunting lands, with sev-
enty thousand low-lying, and often inundated, acres of Hatfield Chase, which was the
private forest of the de Warennes of Conisbrough, before reverting to the Crown in
1347. This was land valued for the hunt by local overlords and for fishing and hunting
birds and small game by peasants and tenants. Peat and withies (i.e., willow coppices)
were cut, and animals were grazed here. Importantly, this “ownership” of the land-
scape ensured its long-term survival, and the human use created microdisturbances
that generated a diverse ecology. Most of the fenland survived until 1600 but was ulti-
mately lost to intensive farming and drainage. Once England's third largest fenland,
this landscape was transformed during three centuries from heath, moor, woodland,
unimproved pasture, marsh, and fen into flat intensive, and mostly uniform, arable
farmland. By 1900, almost all of this once great wetland, having lost its local commu-
nity functions and ownership, was drained and plowed. Small areas remained but
were stripped for peat mining, fragmented and isolated within the agricultural land-
scape (Rotherham and Harrison 2006; Rotherham 2010).
Campaigns in the 1980s led to programs for conservation restoration with work
centered on the Humberhead Peatlands and Potteric Carr. The Yorkshire Wildlife
Trust, for example, created extensive additions to the Potteric Carr Nature Reserve, in-
vesting £2,000,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and European Union. This cre-
ated 185 acres (75 ha) of bittern (
Botautus stellaris
) reed bed habitat.
Further south, in East Anglia, even more common fen was destroyed between
1650 and 1950, including more than 2,486 square miles (4,000 km
2
) that were re-
duced to a few hectares using newly acquired American farming technology in the
1940s. Today, ambitious fen restoration plans exist around Woodwalton and Wicken
Fen. The Great Fen Project at Woodwalton plans to restore 7,410 acres (3,000 ha) of
farmland to new wetland and other habitats to protect the National Nature Reserves
of Woodwalton and Holme Fens). At Wicken Fen, former arable land was returned to
meadow or wetland and there were experiments to reintroduce lost plant species from
seeds at core relict sites.
Despite this, conditions for successful restoration remain uncertain because the
environmental context has changed dramatically. Loss of traditional uses is hugely
problematic. The National Trust tries to mimic former management to create condi-
tions for key target species, but this is very difficult. As local resident and author James
Wentworth-Day (1954) pointed out, the Fens were at the heart of village life even in
