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Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire is the National Trust’s oldest nature reserve, and England’s most famous fen.
The sprawling fenland covers 785 hectares and offers a glimpse into the ancient landscape of East Anglian lowlands with its reedbed, wet woodland and open water, on a deep, peat soil kept wet by rainfall, and a clean, chalky river.
In 1999, the National Trust launched the ‘Wicken Fen Vision’, an ambitious 100-year, landscape-scale conservation project to extend the reserve from Wicken south towards the outskirts of Cambridge, covering an area of 5,300 square hectares.
As a ranger at the reserve, Ajay Tegala has played a key role delivering on this vision by leading vital wildlife surveys, monitoring breeding populations of bitterns and marsh harriers, and roosting hen harriers, as well as helping to manage free-roaming herds of semi-wild Konik ponies and Highland cattle.
He also leads educational tours for schools, colleges and universities to help foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of the natural world; creating the same sense of wonder that a young Charles Darwin felt when he collected beetles in the area in the 1820s.
Speaking to ISEP CEO Sarah Mukherjee MBE, Tegala – who has also worked on the Springwatch and Winterwatch documentaries – offers an insight into life as a countryside ranger and explains why it’s so important for young people to connect with nature.
It’s a very big responsibility. When we’ve got people coming to Wicken Fen for the first time, we’ve got a captive audience, but we need to help them relate to the site so that they become intrigued and hopefully get that sense of excitement and fascination. We take schoolchildren pond dipping, for example, introducing them to something they may have had no experience of before and finding what lurks beneath the water, or dissecting an owl pellet to find what story that tells. So it’s a big responsibility, but also a pleasure.
Absolutely. One of my favourite memories was when a school group came from inner-city London, and most of them had never left the capital before, so they were asking questions like, ‘How do you survive out here?’, and ‘Where are the shops?’. Their minds were blown by it, and it was wonderful to have these fresh faces coming to the site and being able to see them reacting to it, processing it, and then, after the initial shock, becoming more curious.
There are 10,000 species that have been recorded on Wicken Fen, and some people do come and ask ‘Where’s all the wildlife?’. Of course, it’s still there, but some days you’re lucky and the weather’s right so you see things happening, and sometimes you may not see that much wildlife. Our wonderful visitor-centre staff have that golden minute to set the scene and explain that it’s all about the landscape, the experience, and that the more time you spend here, the more wildlife you will encounter.
As a wetland, we depend on water, but some of the past few summers have been so hot that the fen has dried out, and there have been changes in species as well – I haven’t heard a nightingale here for a number of years now, sadly.
We still have cuckoos, thankfully, but when the first one arrives in spring, it’s now as much a relief as it is an excitement. But on the other side of things, there are species, such as egrets, arriving and spreading north. These wetland birds that are quite adaptable are arriving, so we’re seeing a changing cast of wildlife over a very short space of time.
Insects are the foundation of the food chain that everything depends on, but people visiting for the first time may not be that moved if you show them a microscopic insect. However, dragonflies are one of our great charismatic species, because you’ve got the larvae lurking in the water, and then the beautiful adults in the summer, and we get about 20 different species. They are much more successful than even some of our mammalian predators – they have a roughly 90% success rate in catching their prey – and are descended from griffinflies, which were around with the dinosaurs. It’s amazing to think all those years have passed and this creature has continued to survive and thrive, so telling those stories is key.
Social media is a big part of it. Years ago, people would be out walking and looking around at different species, but now they are much more focused on taking photographs for Instagram. I’m always trying to get pictures as well, but there is a balance because there’s a lot to be said for enjoying the moment. If something rare is flying past, don’t grab the phone, grab the binoculars. The mindfulness of breathing and just enjoying the habitat and immersing yourself in a landscape is very important, and that starts without your phone. Once you’ve got that, then take pictures.
We also had some YouTube superstars with millions of followers come down to film a video, which led to more interest and intrigue in Wicken Fen. You have to be creative and use these things in a positive way to bring in that support.
We’ve been a reserve for 126 years, and over that time, reintroductions haven’t always worked for us. We tried to reintroduce the swallowtail butterfly three times, but the problem was that there wasn’t enough space. There wasn’t enough of the food plant, so that gave birth to this vision that we’re 27 years into.
It involves restoring habitat to create more space for wildlife. We let nature lead, but we use two important management methods to start the process. In some areas, we add water to the landscape during winter – this keeps the peat hydrated, locking carbon in the ground, therefore mitigating climate change. At the same time, these wetland areas and reedbeds provide important breeding, feeding and roosting habitat for birds such as the marsh harrier, bittern and crane.
The other management tool is conservation grazing. Highland cattle and Koniks free-roam, keeping the landscape open and creating a mosaic of different vegetation lengths, benefiting plant life and ground-nesting birds.
Bigger, better and more joined-up is very much the message set out in the Lawton Report, Making Space for Nature. Of the 10,000 species that we’ve recorded on Wicken Fen, some of them have become extinct because there wasn’t space for them to spread. There wasn’t that connectivity of habitat. In the past, there’s been competition between reserves to have more wildlife, but actually, working together, supporting each other and sharing experiences is the way forward. Over the past 15-20 years, I’ve seen more conservation organisations, farmers and landowners working together in a joined-up way.
We can generate income from conservation efforts, which then helps the economy. For example, we’ve seen things like wild yoga grow as people use open spaces to make a business out of it. There are some local farmers that are growing rice by conserving wetlands and using them to create a crop. They’re growing rice in Cambridgeshire, which is really interesting and creative. It’s also important that we integrate wild spaces into new developments with green corridors to mitigate the damage.
It was part of my life in general, because I grew up in a small town in rural Lincolnshire where I was one of an incredibly small number of non-white schoolchildren. Of course, with my interest in wildlife, I didn’t see many people working in the field that looked like me either. I didn’t really think much about it, but I do understand how people tend to gravitate towards environments where they feel comfortable and among others from similar backgrounds. This is why having more ambassadors and people from different backgrounds working in conservation is so important. The sector is slowly becoming more diverse, but there is still a long way to go.
It comes back to social media. I was quite isolated in my school days, but today I work with various youth groups – the RSPB, BTO, Butterfly Conservation, Osprey Leadership Foundation, and so on – where people from all over the country come together to share their passion. They now know that they are not alone, and, united, their passion spreads. These are tomorrow’s changemakers; so articulate and driven.
Older people have wisdom and experience, whereas younger people have less fear of making mistakes and a great drive to try new things; their energy is so positive. I enjoy connection with the younger generation through the power of storytelling.
Listen to the full conversation here: ISEP - Sustainable Matters podcast
