Cat Bells’ position as one of the most popular fells in the Lake District is certainly justified. At just 451 metres, its summit is low enough to be shared by wiry fell runners, families and Japanese tourists. All clamber up the short but steep track to drink in a magnificent Lake District vista: below lies Derwentwater, gracefully still, while Bassenthwaite Lake, one of Europe’s premier wildlife sites, stretches away to the north.

Millions of visitors are drawn to the Lakes every year by its beautifully crafted landscape, dotted with livestock and set about with dry-stone walls, farm cottages and what Wordsworth called ‘little lines of wood run wild’. Yet, as the saying goes, still waters run deep. And beneath the surface of this picture-postcard view, the Lake District is facing some difficult challenges.

At the start of this century, the Still Waters Partnership (SWP), a coalition of organisations, including the National Trust, English Nature (now Natural England), the Environment Agency and the Lake District National Park Authority, discovered that the majority of the lakes were in poor condition. Since then, these agencies have started to identify the principal causes of the lakes’ ill health, and their findings make for some rather uncomfortable reading.

First, there is an underlying geological problem, whereby sediment and rock from the surrounding hills and mountains is slowly filling in the lakes. Although this is a natural process that dates back tens of thousands of years, it’s being exacerbated by humans and, increasingly, climate change.

Then there’s pollution – in the form of human waste and farming pesticides – along with invasive species such as rhodendron, swamp stonecrop, Japanese knotweed and Indian Balsam, as well as the toxic alga Oscillatoria agardhii. Together, these threats are strangling the life out of the Lakes.


Bassenthwaite in crisis

The latest report from the SWP, published last year, highlights continuing problems of chronic pollution and singled out Bassenthwaite Lake as being in need of the most immediate attention. However, it also highlighted Windermere, Derwentwater, Ullswater, Brotherswater, Crummock Water, and Ennerdale, describing them as being in an ‘unfavourable’ condition.

The source of the problem that the lakes are facing today lies high above the lakeshore, among the fell farms. These holdings are under increasingly severe economic pressure. The average age of the fell farmer has increased from 50 to 60 in the past ten years, a reflection of the lack of new blood. Meanwhile, according to the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the average hill farm income in the Lake District is just £15,000, although many earn much less.

Financial pressures are increasing as the Environmentally Sensitive Area schemes that encourage good stewardship are phased out, replaced by grants that the NFU feels are less generous. ‘It’s finely balanced,’ says Will Cockbain, the NFU’s national uplands spokesman. ‘I think there will be further reductions in the numbers of hill farmers. We are at, or very near, the point at which farms start tipping over the edge.’

The paradox is that these neat and pretty fell farms, so beloved by visitors, have historically contributed to the recent problems. Open fell-grazing on steep, high slopes is the major land use on 54 per cent of the Bassenthwaite catchment area. And in too many cases, stocking rates on these slopes are too high, causing erosion that leads to sediment being deposited in the lakes.

However, in recent years the emphasis of many farms has changed from pure livestock production to environmental stewardship; stock reduction has been introduced, restoring natural species and habitat, increasing the height of vegetation and helping to stabilise the soils. The largest change has been in sheep numbers, with 54,000 removed between 2000 and 2005.

If the fell farms fold, consequences would ripple across the Lake District. ‘Changes are afoot,’ says John Malley, Borrowdale’s property manager for the National Trust, which owns 51,000 hectares, or a quarter of the Lake District National Park. ‘Fell farms are on the edge. If they go, then the landscape will change very rapidly. Parts of the lakes landscape will develop to look a little wilder and not so manicured.’


Diverted rivers

Far below, in the valleys where the rock and sediment gathers in the waters, the picture is equally uncertain. Bassenthwaite is a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, partly because it hosts England’s only breeding osprey population and the rare vendace fish, a relic from the Ice Age.

The valleys of the Lake District have many heavily modified watercourses. Covering a staggering 373 square kilometres, the Bassenthwaite catchment, also known as the Borrowdale catchment, is no exception. Land drainage and the creation of channels have disconnected rivers from their natural floodplains, so fine sediments remain in the river channels to be deposited in the lakes.

Each year, up to one centimetre of new silt is laid onto the bed of Bassenthwaite, which causes damage to fish spawning grounds. According to the Bassenthwaite Lake Restoration Programme (BLRP), set up as part of the SWP, the rate in the 1940s was half of this.

Bassenthwaite also suffers from a range of pollutants. A major source is run off from farms – often in the form of slurry applied to crops – which has caused significant algal blooms. Each litre of water arriving in Bassenthwaite contains 25 micrograms of phosphorus; Natural England warns that this must be reduced to 15 micrograms to reduce the risk of blooms. ‘Elevated phosphorous levels are good for algal blooms and that isn’t good for the water body,’ says David Keddy, environment management team leader for the Environment Agency in West Cumbria.

‘It’s relatively straightforward to control the large sources of phosphorous,’ he says. ‘But the issue is the diffuse pollution that occurs at quite low levels but, cumulatively, is quite an issue.’ The local hotels and guesthouses are also a source of pollution: most aren’t on mains drainage and rely on small-scale treatment works, so their effluent isn’t treated effectively. (It’s striking how many sewage plants there are in the Lake District – just look at an Ordnance Survey map of the region.)

The BLRP has sponsored a ‘catchment-sensitive’ farming officer, who has studied the use of inorganic fertilisers in more than 60 farms in the lake’s catchment. The intention is to reduce pollution by establishing just how much fertiliser crops require. Other initiatives have involved relocating a batch of fertilised vendace eggs from Derwent Water to Sprinkling Tarn, higher up the catchment.

John Pinder of the Environment Agency, who leads the BLRP, has warned against ‘quick fixes’ and estimates that it could be 2025 before the lake could be said to have recovered. The programme is still being rolled out, and by the end of this year, a second project, covering Lake Windermere, will have been implemented.




A walk to enlightenment

The public – locals, walkers, boaters and other visitors – also have a role to play. Another initiative linked to the BLRP, Bassenthwaite Reflections, seeks to encourage the public to take on the long-term stewardship of the area. As part of this approach, the National Trust has compiled a Borrowdale Catchment Trail, which takes walkers from the source of the River Derwent to Bassenthwaite Lake. The linear walk runs for about 19 kilometres and is designed to offer locals and visitors insights into the processes of how a river develops and influences the landscape.

The trail begins high up at Honister Pass, where scree debris spills down hillsides on the first leg of its journey to the sea. A little farther on, you encounter the wooded ravine of Honister Gill, where the National Trust is attempting to reintroduce woodland. The gill is the farthest west of all the waters that feed the River Derwent, and drains Glaramara and part of the massif of Scafell.

The catchment trail is a delight to walk, with dramatic views of the Seathwaite valley and the classic lowland landscape of sheep, fields and dry-stone walls abruptly bumping up against the dark fells.

After passing through Johnny Wood, where woodpeckers abound and those with sharp ears may hear reed bunting, the path drops to the water’s edge, which, now that feeder waters from Seathwaite have joined the Honister Gill, becomes the Derwent. Stretches of the fields here are fenced off from the river, not to keep the public out, but to prevent livestock from encroaching: in a behavioural trait known as ‘poaching’, cattle and sheep drink from the river, loosening the soil on the banks, which is then washed away when the river is high. The process is repeated until large sections of riverbank are lost.

As you walk the trail, you can’t help noticing the way in which the Derwent often arrows its way, effectively canalised, through woodland. According to the SWP, it may be possible to re-connect the river network to its floodplain by removing these embankments and allowing it to meander in valleys. Sediment in the water would then settle on the floodplain rather than building up in the lake below. However, these floodplain areas are a vital part of the farming economy.

Such attempts to allow the Lake District’s rivers to meander naturally could encounter another obstacle. The region is seeking World Heritage status from UNESCO, on account of the cultural importance of the landscape. Supported by the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA), the bid rests on the Lakes’ ‘unique cultural significance… the place that inspired the conservation movement’, and hence any alteration to its appearance could have a negative impact on the bid. Equally, World Heritage status may impose an obligation to maintain the landscape in its current form.

The Special Area of Conservation (SAC) that covers the Derwent illustrates this quandary. The SAC is in an unfavourable condition, primarily because of canalisation and management practices. ‘Natural England would have difficulty in consenting to any repairs to the revertment of the river, as this would consolidate the unfavourable condition of the Derwent,’ says Malley. ‘The logical conclusion is to allow the river to reconnect with its floodplain, and that has implications for farming. The natural habitats are protected, but we don’t really have any protection that places a value on the cultural, social and economic side.’

The bid for World Heritage status is expected to be submitted in 2009 or 2010. And Mick Casey, spokesman for the LDNPA, acknowledges that it’s an issue. ‘It may be that the boundary of any UNESCO site involves just a small part of the national park and is chosen to exclude areas where UNESCO designation could be a problem,’ he says.

According to Malley, the Lake District faces some difficult choices in the near future. ‘Someone has to decide whether we want the kind of views that we have here at the moment, which draw people in, or a view that looks more like parts of Scotland,’ he says. ‘That is nice in itself but should it have a value placed on it? If the land is going to continue to be stewarded, what’s it going to be stewarded to create?’

Doing nothing certainly isn’t an option, says Keddy. ‘Inaction would lead to a further deterioration in the water quality and more siltation in the lakes,’ he points out. ‘The vendace would be wiped out and algal blooms would be a feature year in, year out. That would have an impact economically, because people may decide not to come to an area that is seen to have polluted lakes. We need to reverse the trend of practices that have become commonplace.’

Keddy sees the algal blooms, which haven’t been seen in Bassenthwaite for three years, as an indication that progress is being made. ‘That may be good luck or it could be the start of a trend,’ he says.

Change will happen in the Lake District, but as John Darlington, area manager for the National Trust in the Lakes, points out, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. ‘The key is that we shouldn’t be afraid of change,’ he says. ‘What we don’t want is a landscape pickled in aspic or a museum landscape. We want a living landscape. The issue is that the pace of change is quite significant.’

October 2007