Introduction
Reach Parish Council (the PC) is passionate about reversing the decline of
nature and wants to take action to protect what is special about Reach, to
create new habitats and to get more people involved in caring for and
enjoying the natural environment.
This nature recovery plan sets out what we want to achieve over the next ten
years to create, maintain and improve nature-rich habitats in the parish of
Reach.
The Context
The parish of Reach is small, covering just 422 hectares (1044 acres). As
such it is one of the smallest parishes in England. The village itself is a small
and compact settlement that sits on a low area of chalk between 3 and 10
metres above sea-level, adjoining the surrounding fen. The parish is divided
into two distinct landscapes, those of chalk and fen. The interface between
the two landscapes runs roughly east-west through the parish and is of
particular value to nature, especially in those areas where the boundary is
marked by catchwaters or drainage ditches.
Two thirds of the parish falls within the National Trust’s Wicken Vision project
area. The National Trust owns a substantial proportion of the land in the
parish. However, despite its proximity to Wicken Fen National Nature
Reserve, the parish has little in the way of formally recognised wildlife areas
with only the Devil’s Dyke SSSI being recorded.
About one third of the parish is underlain by peat soils. We calculate that they
hold over 120,000 tonnes of carbon, which under current management, is
being lost to the atmosphere (and thus contributing to global warming and its
net adverse impact on nature) at the rate of 900 tonnes per year.
The community of Reach has a good track record of preserving, improving,
and creating nature-rich habitats, for example in planting Reach Wood in
1994 and the 24 Acres Wood in 2013. The PC wants to improve on this. The
Reach Neighbourhood Plan, which will shortly go to referendum, contains two
policies (RCH8 and RCH9) specifically designed to improve the biodiversity
of the village and to protect Local Green Spaces. These policies are
underpinned by a biodiversity assessment of the parish by MKA Ecology
which was commissioned by the PC in support of the Neighbourhood Plan.
The assessment
https://www.eastcambs.gov.uk/sites/default/files/9.%20Reach%20NP%20Bio
diversity%20Assessment%20March%202021.pdf informs much of this
nature recovery plan.
