Watchtree Nature Reserve

Introduction

Watchtree Nature Reserve is a social enterprise that Enterprising Communities helped to start up on a former Foot-and-Mouth (FMD) burial site near Carlisle in Cumbria. For more information about Watchtree see www.watchtree.com

Watchtree Nature Reserve sits on the Solway Firth Plain at the heart of a modern livestock farming community close to the hamlet of Wiggonby, approximately 15 km to the west of the city of Carlisle.  The name of the site derives from Watchtree Farm, which was on the site prior to it becoming Great Orton Airfield in 1942, itself named after ‘Watch Hill’ a field some 5 km to the north.  During the 15th and 16th centuries a large tree existed on the hill and was used as a tower to give warning of raids by the Scots from across the Solway Firth.  The former airfield became the base for a number of activities including a microlite flying club and a clay pigeon shoot. During the 1990s a wind farm was established on the old runways. 

The outbreak of FMD in the UK in early 2001 included a high concentration of confirmed cases of the virus on farms in northern Cumbria. To contain the spread of the virus, an emergency policy of culling sheep and cattle in March 2001, known as a ‘contiguous’ or ‘3km’ cull, was carried out in Cumbria. The rapid rate of culling required to contain the virus meant that it was logistically impossible to kill sheep and cattle and bury carcasses on the farms. When the outbreak was finally contained, over 500,000 animals had been buried in 26 pits at the Great Orton Airfield (Watchtree) Site.

The 87-hectare site was selected  as a mass culling and burial site in March 2001 after discussion between MAFF (now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA ]), the Environment Agency (EA) and the British Army. The site was identified, purchased for the government and occupied with no local consultation whatsoever, and soon became a major engineering project to dig trenches for the animals that were to be buried there.  The first local consultations in respect of the operations on the site took place in October 2001 between DEFRA  and a specially established Liaison Group comprising local interested parties and the four local parish councils.  The early meetings were described as ‘confrontational’. DEFRA’s stated preference for future long-term use of the site was to return it to agriculture and grazing – something considered totally unacceptable by the Liaison Group and local farmers.