The truth or not the truth - you be the judge!

Two letters appeared in today's Daily Telegraph. One was from the National Trust following the visit of Lord (Chris) Smith of Finsbury and the Environment Agency to Wicken Fen and his Lordship's insisting that 'only poor land will be flooded' for the Trust's so-called 'Wicken Vision.' The other was from me and it is based on what I had fired off to the editor on Wednesday.

Here is the link to the original piece in the Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7138281/Wetlands-to-be-recreated-in-England.html

And here is the Trust's letter:

"Fenland restoration will keep farming alive

Sir – The Wicken Fen Vision near Cambridge (report, telegraph.co.uk, February 3) is a 100-year project by the National Trust to create a landscape-scale nature reserve. There is also a Great Fen Project near Peterborough, administered by the Wildlife Trust.

Rather than “flooding” the land, “re-wetting” would be a more appropriate description, as the National Trust’s intention is to recreate grasslands that are dry in the summer and wet in the winter.

The vast majority of the land will remain in agricultural use. Fenlands once covered 1,450 square miles of East Anglia; today, with development and drainage, only about 0.1 per cent survives.

Chris Soans
Property Operations Manager
National Trust, Wicken Fen
Ely, Cambridgeshire."

And here is mine:

"Sir – The fenlands near ancient fen-edge settlements such as Wicken, Upware, Burwell, Reach and Swaffham Prior are mostly Grade One, some of the best crop land in the Kingdom.

It is just too awful for the National Trust to be letting such land go to water-logged rack and ruin, covered with weeds.

Geoffrey Woollard
Ely, Cambridgeshire."

Finally, here is a picture (taken last Summer when the thistles were in full 'bloom') of what the National Trust means by keeping farming alive.