News
Great Fen Project "One of the Most Important in the East"
20th March 2006
One of the most ambitious habitat restoration projects in Britain's history today drew praise from Biodiversity Minister Jim Knight, who called it "one of the most important projects in the East of England."
Mr Knight, visiting Woodwalton Fen today, said the Great Fen Project showed that safeguarding rare and fragile habitats had the capacity to produce real benefits for the rural economy and for people, as well as for the environment.
"The future of our iconic countryside is completely dependent on the way people use it," he said.
"The Great Fen Project's vision of an inspirational place to visit by either land or water, with opportunities for innovative local businesses and traditional industries like reed cutting for thatching, shows that often the best way of achieving results for the environment is by making sure people are included."
Mr Knight said his visit to Woodwalton Fen had demonstrated the real importance of the project to the region's future.
"Woodwalton Fen has been a nature reserve for nearly a century, and is now an English Nature National Nature Reserve. The Great Fen Project is helping to secure its future for the hundred years ahead.
"As an internationally important wetland, a Special Conservation Area and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Woodwalton Fen clearly has enormous environmental significance. this project is safeguarding that precious heritage and rare species like the Fen Violet, which is found in only two other places in Britain, and the Fen woodrush, unique to this area.
"The expansion of education work here will help people of all ages understand and appreciate this unique place's wildlife and natural history, habitat restoration, historical ecology and local social history.
"I'm pleased that the Government is able to support these aims through the involvement of English Nature and through funding like recent grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and ODPM."
Woodwalton Fen covers 208 hectares and includes wildflower meadows, reedbeds, and woodland, with a full-time site manager employed by English Nature. It supports an impressive list of rare plants and animals, with habitats including purple moor grass meadows, tall fen and scrub communities, woodland and other types of grasses, sedges herbs and mosses.
Woodwalton Fen is a major part of the plans to restore over 3,700 hectares of fenland from arable land between Huntingdon and Peterborough. Part of the project will acquire land that will join Woodwalton with Holme Fen, another English Nature National Nature Reserve.
The Great Fen Project is a partnership between English Nature, the Wildlife Trust, Huntingdonshire District Council and the Environment Agency.
