Paludiculture Progress

We are delighted to say that we are pressing ahead with the purchase of a second location for paludiculture at Speechly’s Farm in the centre of the Great Fen. This is part of our transformational Peatland Progress project (funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund) which will complete the land link between new wetland in the north of the Great Fen and that in the south, making the Great Fen bigger, better and more joined up for wildlife. 

At the new farm we will be creating over 100 hectares of new wetland as well as a bigger (up to 20ha) demonstration site for wet farming. Here we will showcase the economic potential of wet farming crops including sphagnum moss, use an engineered wetland to provide clean water to support Woodwalton Fen NNR, and undertake the science to demonstrate prevention of carbon loss from rewetted peat soils. We are working with ecological consultants OHES Environmental who are well known to us, having designed wetland in several areas of the Great Fen previously.

At our existing paludiculture site, Water Works, work has continued planting sphagnum moss and site maintenance. 29 volunteer and staff planting parties have taken place between January – June 2022, and with their invaluable support, sphagnum planting is now complete! Thank you so much to everyone who has volunteered their time. 

VIP Visitors

As part of our consultation and to spread the importance of this kind of work and lessons learned to a national audience, we have also welcomed some special interest/VIP groups to tour the sites.

One example took place in April when the Great Fen hosted a fantastic visit comprising several different interest groups, including both internal stakeholders, policy makers, funders and external groups wishing to benefit from our knowledge and expertise. We invited them altogether on the same day and this format proved to be very productive and stimulating, the diversity of guests adding to the variety of questioning and conversation. Guests were from Doncaster City Council (DCC), the Environment Agency, RSPB, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, and representatives from Thorne & Hatfield Moors Forum, South Yorkshire Econet, and Yorkshire Creates. Great Fen stakeholders in attendance were Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts, and representatives from our funders at the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). We also welcomed Dr Nik Johnson, Mayor of the Peterborough and Cambridge Combined Authority, and Great Fen project partners from Natural England and the Middle Level Commission. A large and influential group who all enjoyed the day immensely.

Our guests received a presentation about the work of the Great Fen, and then embarked on a site visit to Water Works and other points of interest in the Great Fen. The DCC contingent were particularly keen to see how wet farming delivered nature-based solutions/eco system service – cleaning water, locking in carbon, preventing peat loss and supporting biodiversity, as well as wet farming’s potential to create income streams to support wetland conservation. We look forward to seeing how they take this information forward in their own local environment.

Following the visit a wonderful blog was produced by one of our guests, Doncaster Councillor Sarah Smith, featuring her beautiful sketches and photography from the day -  How to stop and start time.

Lessons Learned

As we move further ahead with the paludiculture trials, it’s essential we gather learning around the performance of different crop types in these systems and we’ve been delighted to welcome local scientists to help us in this process.  

In May, Professor Paul Dupree of Cambridge University, Department of Biochemistry, his PhD student Darragh Kelleher and two postdoctoral research associates visited Water Works. Darragh will be studying the cell wall structure of sphagnum moss species to try to identify why this well-known peat moss is so resistant to degradation. His research also encompasses how sphagnum species control their environment through the production of a variety of phenolic-like secretions and other metabolites. Darragh commented that “it becomes increasingly important to deepen our knowledge of such complex interactions, especially when considering the importance of peatlands in tackling climate change”. 

An important site visit to share learning around lowland peat wetlands, paludiculture and climate change also took place in June comprising:

• The Great Fen Steering Committee (project partners from the Environment Agency, Huntingdonshire District Council, Middle Level Commission, Natural England and WTBCN)
• The Great Fen Joint Technical Advisory Committee (which comprises external experts in many fields which give technical, professional and academic advice to the Great Fen)
• Professor Richard Lindsay, University of East London (expert in paludiculture). Richard outlined the developing policy framework for lowland peat, and spoke about the ecology of peatlands, paludiculture methodology, the crops in the trial, their monitoring and peat and water level monitoring, and in particular, sphagnum moss, its properties and uses, and the challenges of growing it in field conditions.
• Dr Ross Morrison, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (expert in GHG science), who spoke about the UKCEH Green House Gas, atmospheric, and soil moisture monitoring of the Water Works paludiculture site.
• Mr Martin Parsons, undertaking a research MSc at Anglia Ruskin University into the effect of occult precipitation on sphagnum moss. Martin showed the varieties of sphagnum involved in his trial and his methodology for capturing occult precipitation.
• Dr Bruce Napier, National Institute of Agricultural Botany (plant breeding expert), who spoke about plant breeding potential of one of our trial crops, Glyceria fluitans.
• Great Fen staff, Kate Carver Project Manager, Lorna Parker Restoration Manager and Paul Trevor Senior Reserves Officer, all of whom spoke about the Water Works project.

Barriers to Progress

For paludiculture to succeed, we must also gather evidence around the barriers farmers face to converting to more sustainable methods. We have joined forces with our paludicultural partners, University of East London, as contributors to a key Defra policy formation group, the Lowland Agricultural Peat Task Force (LAPTF) at various levels.

Professor Richard Lindsay is a member of the national LAPTF committee, and Richard and I are both members of a LAPTK paludiculture subgroup which is working with Defra to create a Paludiculture Roadmap Pathways document. Defra has organised stakeholder workshops across the UK (involving farmers, growers, producers and landowners, academics, charities, policy makers and others) to inform the work of the subgroup and highlight stakeholder barriers to the adoption of paludiculture. Jack Clough from UEL, Richard and I participated in these and between us we covered all four locations: Bristol, Manchester, Peterborough, and York. During the workshops we were able to share our Great Fen experiences with Water Works and push for more demonstration projects, engagement, and knowledge exchange within the policy roadmap. This has brought Great Fen paludiculture to the attention of a broad range of stakeholders with the potential for wider engagement within the growing paludiculture community. 

In May, the Water Works paludiculture site was also visited by a group from the UK Environmental Lawyers Association following an online presentation I gave to them. Intellectual Property of paludiculture methodologies is an important issue in evaluating barriers to development of paludicultural systems.

Working with Farmers

It is increasingly important that learning and evidence from our paludiculture demonstrations is shared with farmers and their key stakeholders. To facilitate this objective, we welcomed Professor Gideon Henderson, Defra Chief Scientific Adviser, who spent a whole day in March at the Great Fen, visiting the Water Works project in the morning and the National Nature Reserves in the afternoon.  Gideon wished to explore how Defra might facilitate the development and take up of paludiculture in the UK so to aid that discussion other guests were invited to the visit, which was led by Brian Eversham, CEO WTBCN. Guests who joined Lorna, Richard and I were Dave Stone (Deputy Chief Scientist, Natural England), Dr. Olly Watts (Senior Climate Change Policy Officer, RSPB), Finlay Duncan and Nellie Taheri from SaltyCo, and Catherine Weightman (Area Manager, Natural England).

On receiving our suggestions to facilitate the development and take up of paludiculture in the UK, Gideon commented “This is a valuable set of ideas and challenges to Defra.  I will feed them into the Farm Innovation Programme as it develops, and into our ongoing thinking about peatland strategy”.

A Creative Culture 

Interest in wet farming shows no sign of abating, as can be seen from the many visits mentioned above. And it’s not just scientists, conservationists, and farmers/growers. We also get requests for site visits from artists, photographers and writers – the creative sector generally.

We’ve welcomed Taiwanese-British artist Yu-Chen Wang to site as research for her new residency at Metal in Peterborough. Yu-Chen is researching the history of draining the Fens and exploring the East of England’s marshy and mysterious landscape and its rich wildlife. I also had the pleasure of presenting at the University of East Anglia’s recent symposium Song of the Reeds organised by Steve Waters, Professor of Scriptwriting at UEA and Playwright. Poets, writers, musicians, and other collaborators joined conservation experts at this re-wilding drama to share their perspectives on species loss and nature writing, culminating with a theatre performance of Voices from the Reeds featuring a Holme Fen-inspired monologue ‘How Moss Will Save the World'.  

It’s exciting to see how valued our work is to so many in so many different fields. It gives us the motivation to keep testing, learning, developing, improving, and sharing these lessons with everyone as passionate about helping to solve climate change and benefit our wildlife as we are.