EH Wetlands Strategy

English Heritage's Wetland Strategy PDF (65kb)

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Following the completion of the MAREW project, we have now developed a high level strategy which establishes a framework for a coherent approach to the conservation and management of wetlands. This will support the development of specific policies to protect the cultural heritage of wetlands, and under-pin improved decision-making with regard to wetland archaeology. The strategy sustains many of English Heritage's core activities related to the identification, understanding, protection, and management of the historic environment. It addresses important elements of the Power of Place agenda, in particular, the links between the cultural heritage and nature conservation in the regeneration of the countryside, training and education to promote better conservation, and increased access to and enjoyment of this unique cultural resource.

The strategy sets out a range of broad objectives as well as a number of specific initiatives, and is based on four main principles:

• Management, promoting practical mechanisms to conserve and protect the cultural heritage by developing guidance and best practice for the integration of cultural heritage and nature conservation in wetland management;
• Outreach, promoting and disseminating understanding and appreciation of the cultural heritage of wetlands by making the results of wetland research easily accessible to the general public, to landowners and managers, and to professional interests;
• Policy, promoting the cultural heritage interests of wetlands in the work of local authorities, national, international, and intergovernmental agencies;
• Research, continuing with programmes of survey and excavation as an essential pre-condition for the development of successful management practices and promoting applied research to underpin good management of wetlands and to inform future policy development.

English Heritage does not possess the necessary experience or resources to achieve all this acting alone. Rather, we will have to work in collaborative partnerships with nature conservation and other interests to common objectives. The strategy represents the first stage in this longer-term process. If we can successfully embed these principles in our own work, and the work of all our partners, then together we will be able to find practical solutions to the difficult problems that beset wetland archaeology.

Our current priorities are to identify the most important wetland monuments at risk and to contribute to the development of site-specific conservation management strategies where appropriate; to work with other national and international agencies concerned with wetland management to develop joint policies for the conservation and preservation of wetlands; to help local authorities address the issue of wetland archaeology in the planning process more effectively; to work with other bodies to address wetland cultural heritage issues that fall outside the planning process; to enhance our understanding of monuments at risk in England's wetlands and the threats to wetland landscapes (focussing in particular on upland peatlands and lowland landscapes deeply buried beneath peat and alluvium); and to build a coherent research strategy to develop wetland-specific prospection techniques and to advance studies on in-situ preservation in wetlands.

Implementing the Strategy

We have already committed significant resources to defining and recording the archaeological significance of England's main lowland wetlands, and have carried out the broader-based research necessary to inform the development of the strategy. We will continue to support work (eg investigating the reburial of archaeological timbers) that directly relates to these objectives, and are now moving to develop a number of new initiatives to implement the strategy directly. An inventory of the most important wetland monuments in England will be compiled as a pre-cursor to the development of site specific conservation strategies. We are also considering participating in a European-wide project which is developing procedures and tools for the monitoring and assessment of wetland functions. These are required to provide the information on which to base informed management decisions, and it is vitally important to ensure that the requirements of the historic environment are fully incorporated in the development of any such management system. We are planning to play an active part in World Wetlands Day on February 2, 2002, in order to begin the process of raising the profile of the cultural heritage amongst the general public, and in the nature conservation world in general. As part of the same process, we are also exploring how to support public participation in wetland research during fieldwork. We have commissioned a project from Exeter University to creat GIS-enabled wetland archaeological resource information to support local authority planning curators. Later this year we hope to begin a pilot project, through the Lancaster University Archaeological Unit, to explore in more detail the archaeological potential of upland peats, and to assess the extent and causes of upland peat erosion.