{"id":2230120,"date":"2026-10-30T13:34:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T10:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2230120"},"modified":"2026-10-30T13:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T10:34:37","slug":"fancott-nature-reserve-fly-tipping-costs-charity-13k-to-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2230120","title":{"rendered":"Fancott nature reserve fly-tipping costs charity \u00a313k to clear"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/4145\/live\/2d8d4290-d45f-11f1-a701-fddedf244c16.png”]<\/p>\n

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\"TheThe Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
A large quantity of waste appeared overnight, the Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants said<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Several tonnes of fly-tipped waste took more than a week to clear, costing a charity more than \u00a313,000. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It appeared overnight in its wildlife meadow and included flooring, mattresses, rubble, plastic, broken glass, insulating foam, gas canisters, appliances and plasterboard. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It confirmed that information that could potentially identify items was passed to Bedfordshire Police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"TheThe Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The trust said it took them a week to deal with the mess and to add up all the costs <\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Matthews said: “It was a shocking sight when our team arrived for a routine check of the nature reserve. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“There were piles and piles of rubbish everywhere, which must have taken someone quite a while to offload.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Specialist contractors had to be called, and it was money and time “that should have been spent on protecting wildlife”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"TheThe Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Fancott Wood and Meadows nature reserve before the waste was dumped<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The site is cut for hay in late June, and then cattle graze on the land from September. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The reserve is home to cowslips, adder’s tongue fern, ragged-robin, great burnet and saw-wort, the trust said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Its wildlife seeds are also collected and donated to other meadows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Do you have a story suggestion for Beds, Herts or Bucks? Contact us below.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on <\/i>BBC Sounds<\/i>, <\/i>Facebook<\/i>, <\/i>Instagram<\/i> and <\/i>X<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c6ly30e51kgno”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/4145\/live\/2d8d4290-d45f-11f1-a701-fddedf244c16.png”] The Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants A large quantity of waste appeared overnight, the Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants said Several tonnes of fly-tipped waste took more than a week to clear, costing a charity more than \u00a313,000. The Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs and Northants said the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-2230120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2230120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2230120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2230120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2230120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}