Cattle are rescued from RSPB Ouse Washes nature reserve amid ‘epic’ rain

Cattle had to be rescued from a Cambridgeshire nature reserve after torrential rain saw floods of up to three metres in depth.

The land at RSPB Ouse Washes, near Manea, is used during the summer months as grazing land for cattle, which perform an important job of keeping grass and vegetation down.

But after days of rain storms, RSPB staff had to move quickly to ensure the cattle were safely removed from the land before they became trapped by the floods.

“The last few cattle were up to their waists in water when we managed to get them off the land,” explained Jonathan Taylor, site manager at RSPB Ouse Washes.

He said: “The birds didn’t nest this year because it was too late (when the winter floods cleared). Livestock came on and were grazing as normal, and we made quite a lot of hay, so we got quite a lot of land management done then. But the season has been so short. Around 1,500 cattle have had to be evacuated off.

“The last ones actually came off on Wednesday (October 2) which is around six weeks early. So it’s a big issue for those owners of those livestock who are not expecting those animals normally to come home until much later. It’s going to cost more to keep those animals because they were using the Washes as a food source. With the Washes going under quickly it’s been a difficult thing for the farmers’ business.

“The water is much deeper than usual and in the last couple of weeks we have had quite big thunderstorms and epic amounts of rain.

“Bedfordshire area took about a third of its annual rainfall in well less than a month. As I watched the storms I knew we had to prepare. We knew it was going to flood very quickly. The Washes is a very long site – 20 miles long. It is very deep at the start, and then it is tilted down. Some years you’ve got seven or eight days to get the animals off the far end. But this year we knew we had to get them all evacuated in about five days maximum.”

He revealed: “There are about about eight million cubic metres of water coming onto the Washes each day. And at any one moment there’s about 70 million cubic meters of water on these Washes, which is more than the capacity of Grafham Water.”

In June this year, we reported concerns that there were no nesting birds or grazing cattle at the nature reserve after the wet winter and a series of storms that saw “a month’s rainfall in one day” and left the area under water.

The land at RSPB Ouse Washes is usually an important nesting ground in summer for many species of birds, including snipe and black-tailed godwits. But this year there were no nests built as the grassland that normally dries out enough to support the birds remained under water.

Now Mr Taylor believes there will be a knock-on effect for some species of duck, which will not be able to live on the Washes as the flooding is too deep.

He said: “It’s going to affect some of the duck species that come here – the ones that rely on it being shallowly flooded. It’s just too deep for them.

“So it’s only of use for roosting swans, who feed on the district’s arable crops, and the diving ducks who will probably be OK. But the birds that need it to be shallowly flooded and rely on having access to the grasses to feed on them will be affected.”

He explained that the RSPB is now buying land around the edges of the Ouse Washes in order to provide for the wildlife that can no longer access food and shelter when it is under the water.

“That’s our direction of travel now,” said Mr Taylor.

The cattle are needed on the Washes in the summer months in order to get the grass as short as possible before the winter floods.

Mr Taylor said: “It’s important for the condition of grass the following year, but it’s also important for the environment, because if you don’t manage the vegetation each year the flow of water through the floodplain gets congested. And you can have trees starting to grow, or vegetation blocking ditches, which is an issue for the flow.

“Even though we had a short window this year, we did quite a good job of it. We could have done with longer. The main problem is that the livestock are now facing a very, very long winter.

“The farmers are having to buy in more food and may be going into emergency stocks to sustain their livestock through till the next April.”

Now farmers are being encouraged to sell their land to create new habitats for birds and cattle around the edge of the floodplain. This would allow wildlife experts to manage the area with more certainty and be able to plan for the future, with climate change increasingly the likelihood of more flooding.