Ouse Washes Landscape Recovery will be an ambitious 20-year partnership project, delivering habitat creation across the Fens in the east of England. The project aims to help in tackling the joint nature and climate emergency while supporting local farmers’ livelihoods.
DEFRA funding is supporting a two-year development phase under the Landscape Recovery pilot, which is the highest tier of England’s Environmental Land Management Scheme. Through the development phase, private landowners and environmental NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are working in partnership to secure income for delivering nature-friendly land management.
Ouse Washes Landscape Recovery aims to deliver on Government commitments to Nature Recovery Networks and protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.
We're building on decades of experience of successful habitat creation and management across numerous sites. These nature-based solutions deliver:
We know our partnership project is strong due to the range and quality of experience of our partners. Our partnership project includes:
There is a significant opportunity for private buyers and investors to work with us through a blended finance approach, to secure long-term public funding.
Contact us if your organisation shares our goals to deliver biodiversity, carbon and water management benefits. Your funding could help our farm partners to continue to create and manage exemplar wetland habitat sites.
The Fens in the east of England are a vast expanse of fertile drained marshland, spanning 1,500 square miles across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Farmers in the Fens are facing mounting pressures. The increase in extreme weather events, with prolonged wet and dry periods, can cause significant disruption to a farm’s productivity, while draining the land here is becoming less sustainable. The cost of inputs is increasingly volatile and the income from produce is unpredictable. And critically, the Basic Payments Scheme, a subsidy paid by the Government which provided farmers with essential income to keep their business viable, is being phased out.
Our project sites will deliver public good through land management changes, securing long-term sustainable funding by providing multiple public benefits.
Much of the land in the Fens was once flooded for most of the year. Bitterns and Cranes were found lurking in the fenland reedbeds, Teals and Mallards would breed on the meres and Eels would weave through the waters.
Intensive draining of the landscape began in the 1600s. Rivers were straightened to speed up the passage of water to the sea. To make land more productive, enormous volumes of water were removed, at first using wind pumps, then steam, and now diesel or electric powered pumps.
The prolific crop production in these peat-rich soils has earnt the Fens the nickname of the ‘breadbasket’ of the UK, and today it produces more than 7% of England’s agricultural output.
This landscape's contribution to agricultural productivity has come at the cost of significant carbon emissions from drained peat soils, declining soil health, and the displacement of those once abundant fenland species.
Ouse Washes, a 32-kilometre-long flood plain, lies the heart of this drainage operation. It’s the largest grazing pasture that floods in the UK.
Up to 2000 cattle are brought on to Ouse Washes each year to graze. This keeps the grass short, and stop bushes and trees from growing, allowing flood water to flow freely through the Washes later in the year. Those short grasses provide nesting sites for threatened wading birds like Black-tailed Godwits, Lapwings, Redshanks and Snipe. The Washes are also internationally significant for important numbers of Whooper and Bewick's Swans and ducks in winter.
Unfortunately, the species that make Ouse Washes their home are under significant threat from the increased frequency and severity of flooding.
Both environmental organisations and private landowners have already taken action to create wetland habitats nearby; the Ouse Washes Landscape Recovery project will build on their successes. The project aims to support both the once abundant fenland species and build resilience in those now at risk from the pressure of increased flooding.
This spring, Spoonbills have returned to Cambridgeshire to breed for the first time in 360 years. They had been absent as a breeding species in this area since the 1600s due to hunting and habitat loss – a result of the drainage of the fens.
The team at RSPB Ouse Washes were delighted to have three pairs raising chicks on site in 2024. These birds are demonstrating the enormous potential of our partnership project to deliver for species at a landscape-scale.
"The Ouse Washes are generally very wet in the spring, but we must thank neighbouring farmers too for the return of the Spoonbill," said RSPB Site Manager, Jonathan Taylor. "They have created small wetlands to diversify their landholding and the birds feed there, too.”
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The Spoonbills are dependent on the parcels of high-quality wetland habitat in the vast expanse of intensively farmed fenland, such as areas managed by project partner Joe Martin. Joe has created wildlife-rich habitat through government agri-environment schemes.
Joe has been delighted that within a year of creating his wetland he is able to watch the adult birds teaching their young to feed in the habitat that he has created.
These newly wetted areas are creating pitstops for birds to refuel; they’re landscape-scale stepping stones across the county, allowing for bigger, better and more joined up habitats throughout the fens.