The konik horses of Wicken Fen

A horse is eating my trousers. It sounds like something from a school French phrasebook of the 1950s, but it’s true. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m still wearing them.

The animal in question is one of 44 dusty-grey coloured konik ponies living at the Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire.

The word konik means ‘little horse’ in Polish and the breed is one of the most ancient in the world – genetically close to the herds that would have roamed Europe 4,000 years ago.

The animals are inquisitive, using their noses, lips – and teeth – to find out more about anything new – and that includes strange people who happen to wander into their vicinity.
They are performing a valuable environmental function at Wicken Fen, helping to transform unspectacular former agricultural land into a species-diverse wetland habitat.

‘We’ve had the koniks here since 2001 and they’re helping to control scrub growth,’ says Carol Laidlaw, the reserve’s grazing warden.

‘We have a breeding herd because the animals’ social behaviour is a key part of the way they shape the landscape – with a single-sex herd you don’t get the same range of behaviour and movement. A group of geldings together will just concentrate on eating.’

Well, they would, I suppose.

Wicken Fen is one of the oldest nature reserves in the UK. The initial hectare of land on which it is centred was purchased by conservation charity the National Trust in 1899 and much more has been added over the years so that today the property encompasses over 758 hectares.

It is a dramatic and diverse place – this part of eastern England is overwhelmingly flat, the lie of the land making the skies seem enormous, the whole area having a slightly other-wordly and mysterious quality, with the wind whispering through swaying sedge fields and distant bird cries echoing from the far distance.

The fens were historically an isolated part of the country. Criss-crossed by waterways, they were inhabited by people who eked out a tough living from the land, harvesting reeds and sedge, which would be used for thatching roofs, with sickles and scythes, sometimes using stilts to pass through the watery landscape.

Interesting as the Fenland past is, however, it is the future that is the real cause for excitement here.

The Wicken Fen Project, a 100-year vision that aims to create a 53 square kilometre area of land that runs across the county of Cambridgeshire, is now in its 12th year.

Significantly enlarged, this internationally important wetland area should be better able to cope with a potentially warmer climate, help lower extinction rates of endangered species and make up – at least to an extent – for the loss of coastal areas of rare habitat to rising sea levels.

It should also act as a sponge for water, perhaps guarding cities such as Cambridge from the effects of increased rainfall and flooding.

Last, but not least, it will remain a place where species such as those inquisitive konik ponies will continue both to provide an attraction to visitors as well as a environmentally friendly and sustainable way of recapturing long-lost habitats.

http://www.wicken.org.uk/