Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership

The Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership scheme (OWLP)[1] is a 3-year project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund which runs from 2014 - 2017.

The main aim of such schemes is to conserve the UK’s distinctive landscape character areas.

These projects focus on the following outcomes: The area targeted by the OWLP scheme focuses on the distinctive rural, open and tranquil landscape surrounding the Ouse Washes; this landscape includes important wetland and washland habitats set within productive agricultural land.

The project focuses on the area around the Old Bedford River and New Bedford River in the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Fens and includes the RSPB nature reserves[2] to its south, near St Ives and Fen Drayton.

This unique landscape area includes or abuts a large number of vibrant small settlements and is close to the market towns and cities of Downham Market, Chatteris, March, Littleport, Ely, Cambridge and St. Ives.