Fancott nature reserve fly-tipping costs charity £13k to clear

Several tonnes of fly-tipped waste took more than a week to clear, costing a charity more than £13,000.

The Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants said the rubbish was dumped at the Fancott Wood and Meadows nature reserve, close to Toddington, Bedfordshire, in August.

It appeared overnight in its wildlife meadow and included flooring, mattresses, rubble, plastic, broken glass, insulating foam, gas canisters, appliances and plasterboard.

Aidan Matthews, its senior reserves manager, said: "It is unbelievable that someone thinks a nature reserve is an acceptable place to dump waste like this."

The trust said: "Staff time plus skip hire and removal has been a significant cost to the charity and taken the reserve team away from their work protecting nature sites in the area."

It confirmed that information that could potentially identify items was passed to Bedfordshire Police.

Matthews said: "It was a shocking sight when our team arrived for a routine check of the nature reserve.

"There were piles and piles of rubbish everywhere, which must have taken someone quite a while to offload.

"This is the latest incident in the growing problem of fly-tipping on our nature reserves, and it is certainly the largest we've seen."

Specialist contractors had to be called, and it was money and time "that should have been spent on protecting wildlife".

He said staff from across the trust were called in to help, along with land management partners Natural England, the grazier, and a dedicated team of volunteers "to literally pick up tens of tonnes of fly-tipped material from the wildflower meadow".

The site is cut for hay in late June, and then cattle graze on the land from September.

Matthews added that grazing had to be delayed by four weeks "due to the site needing to be cleared before the animals could enter the field".

The reserve is home to cowslips, adder's tongue fern, ragged-robin, great burnet and saw-wort, the trust said.

Its wildlife seeds are also collected and donated to other meadows.

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Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs & Northants