CGS20: Manage wet grassland for breeding waders
Source: gov.uk (2025-09-10)

What you must do to get paid for this CSHT action and advice on how to do it.

This action is part of Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT). You must read the CSHT guidance (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/countryside-stewardship-higher-tier-csht) before you apply.

Duration

5 years

How much you’ll be paid

£676 per hectare (ha) per year

Action’s aim

This action’s aim is that there’s wet grassland with:
- in-field wet areas, including standing water and bare and muddy areas, during the wader breeding season and the autumn and winter months
- suitable sward heights and structure for the priority breeding wader bird species on your land (or likely to use your land) to nest during their breeding season
- appropriate rush cover for the priority breeding wader species on your land (or likely to use your land)
- any historic or archaeological features protected from damage
- a good cover and range of flowering grasses and wildflowers from late spring and during the summer months if your land is priority habitat species-rich grassland
The purpose of this is to:
- provide suitable wet grassland nesting and feeding habitat for priority breeding wader species including lapwing, redshank, curlew and snipe so they can, in most years, successfully fledge their young
- support other species such as wintering wildfowl
- support other features such as historic or archaeological features, sites, ditches of high environmental value and areas of species-rich wet grassland
You can use this action to manage existing grassland or grassland that’s being restored or created for breeding waders.

Where you can do this action

You can do this action on eligible land located below the moorland line that’s one of the following:
- priority habitat coastal or floodplain grazing marsh (https://magic.defra.gov.uk/magicmap.aspx?&startTopic=GreyRasters&chosenLayers=baseIndex,CSTcfgmarsh&box=-1081464:-115718:1929075:1363366&useDefaultbackgroundMapping=false) which supports priority breeding waders including lapwing, redshank, curlew, snipe – it does not need to be mapped on the Priority Habitat Inventory (PHI) layer on MAGIC
- other wet grassland which already supports priority breeding waders
- has high potential for the restoration of wet grassland for priority breeding waders
You can also do this action on arable or temporary grassland located below the moorland line which has high potential for creation of wet grassland for breeding waders.

If you’re restoring or creating grassland, you must provide your Natural England adviser with:
- a map showing where restoration (from permanent grassland to grassland habitat) or creation (from arable or temporary grassland to grassland habitat) will take place
- soil analysis results including the soil available phosphorus (Olsen P method) and the soil potassium status – this is only required if you’re intending to introduce wildflowers. Soil analysis must have been carried out within the last year, or within the last 5 years if there have been no fertiliser applications or increase in stocking levels since the last soil analysis.
Eligible land

You can do this action on land that’s:
- an eligible land type
- registered with an eligible land cover on your digital maps
- declared with a land use code (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-use-codes-rural-payments) which is compatible with the eligible land cover
Available area you can enter into this action

Total or part of the available area in the land parcel.

Rotational or static action

This action is static. This means you must do it on the same location each year of the action’s duration.

What to do

Your Natural England adviser will assess your land. They’ll work with you to adapt and agree the activities you must do to achieve this action’s aim. All mandatory activities will be set out in your agreement document.

To get paid for this action, you must:
- maintain or restore the appropriate hydrology and provide wet conditions for priority wading birds during their breeding season
- manage ditch water levels so they are high enough to provide standing water and muddy areas that are free from tall vegetation – you can apply for CWT3: Manage ditches of high environmental value to pay for this
- make sure there are areas of standing water and wet features during autumn and winter
- provide the correct vegetation height and structure for target wading birds during the breeding season (typically late March to June for lapwing and redshank and April to July for curlew and late July for snipe) – you can do this usually by grazing but sometimes by cutting or topping
- carry out appropriate management to protect historic and archaeological features
- keep boundary hedges short – you’ll agree the exact height with your adviser and stated in your agreement document
The advice you’re given from Natural England is specific to your land which means (where relevant) you may also need to:
- maintain wet features, including scrapes and gutters, to provide muddy areas for waders and wildfowl to feed – you can apply for CSP11: Manage scrapes and gutters supplement to pay for this
- keep scrapes and gutters wet using water control structures
- keep vegetation around scrapes and gutters short with some taller tussocks
- remove livestock at certain times of the year
- reduce the risk of nests being trampled by grazing with a low stocking density and carefully managing livestock during the wader breeding season
- follow a stocking calendar which includes stock type and minimum and maximum stocking rates each month
- restrict topping to areas and time periods set out in your agreement
- control scrub, rushes and other tall or competitive plant species to achieve the right vegetation conditions for target birds
- maintain or restore a mix of high value indicator plants if the grassland is a species-rich priority habitat – some indicator species must be frequent or occasional across the site (as set out in your agreement)
- establish additional plant species if agreed with your Natural England adviser
- follow an agreed wildfowling strategy and record bag returns
You must not:
- apply fertilisers or farmyard manure (unless agreed with your Natural England adviser)
- apply any other manures, digestate or any other industrial by-product including paper waste
- apply pesticides – you may be able to use herbicides to spot-treat or weed-wipe for the control of injurious weeds, invasive non-native plant species, nettles or other plants if this has been agreed with your Natural England adviser
- supplementary feed except for the use of mineral blocks or other forms of feed agreed by your Natural England adviser
- carry out mechanical operations or other activities that may cause significant disturbance to birds during the breeding season or the autumn and winter (this does not include ditch maintenance)
- work on ditches between April and August – this may also apply to surface water features
- harrow, roll, supplementary feed or allow bare soil on historic or archaeological features
- allow additional scrub to encroach on archaeological or historic features
- plough, cultivate or reseed, unless this is part of an agreed sward creation or enhancement plan
- carry out drainage works without written permission from your Natural England adviser
- carry out land management activities in a way that causes poaching or overgrazing
When to do it

You must do this action each year of its duration.

Evidence to keep

You must keep evidence to show what you have done to complete this action. If it’s not clear that you have done this action in a way that could reasonably be expected to achieve its aim, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) may ask for this evidence.

You must supply the evidence if they ask for it, including:
- records of field operations at parcel level
- photographs
Other actions or options you can do on the same area as this action

You can do the following actions or options on the same area in a land parcel as this action.

Some actions or options can only be done on the same area if they’re done at a different time of year to this action.

You can do the following actions or options on the eligible boundaries of a land parcel entered into this action:
- CSHT actions: CWT3, CHRW4
- SFI 2024 actions: CHRW1, CHRW2, CHRW3, BND1, BND2, WBD10
- SFI 2023 actions: HRW1, HRW2, HRW3
- CS option BE3 (management of hedgerows)
Consents, permissions and licensing requirements

To apply for this action, you’ll need:
- Scheduled Monument Consent (https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/planning/consents/smc/) from Historic England for any work on scheduled monuments
- consent from Natural England for any activity on land designated as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/protected-areas-sites-of-special-scientific-interest#get-consent-to-carry-out-operations-on-your-land)
You may need to:
- agree an implementation plan or feasibility study with your Natural England adviser
- obtain any necessary consents from the Environment Agency, Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA) or Internal Drainage Board (IDB) before starting any work
- get a wildlife licence (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/wildlife-licences) from Natural England if your activities affect a protected species or their habitat
- get advice from your Forestry Commission woodland officer or Natural England adviser if you have other archaeological or historic features on your agreement land
All archaeological and historic features (including scheduled monuments) are identified in your Historic Environment Farm Environment Record (HEFER).

If you’re a tenant, it’s your responsibility to check whether your tenancy agreement allows you to complete what’s required in the actions you choose. You may need your landlord’s consent.

Capital grants to support this action

If you need to complete an implementation plan or a feasibility study before you apply, you can apply for capital grants plans funding (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/capital-items-guidance-for-applicants-and-agreement-holders#capital-grants-plans).

You can also apply for capital items (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/capital-items-guidance-for-applicants-and-agreement-holders) to help you achieve the action’s aims. Your Natural England adviser will discuss eligible capital items with you.

Advice to help you do this action

The following optional advice may help you to do this action. Your agreement document will set out all the activities you must do.

Choosing a site

Choose a site which has:
- large areas of open land, 10 hectares (ha) or more
- few trees or hedgerows (2m or less in height)
- limited or no public access, such as major rights of way or roads, so birds are not disturbed
Avoid sites with perching structures, like power lines, as these can encourage predators.

You can use MAGIC (https://magic.defra.gov.uk/home.htm) to check if you have wet grassland such as coastal and floodplain grazing marsh. You can also use MAGIC to find out if lapwing, redshank, curlew or snipe are present in your area, but you will need to make sure that you can provide the specific habitat conditions they need to nest on your land.

For best results:
- use this action alongside other wet grassland, low input grassland or target features actions over a wide area – potentially linking with other landowners
- use this action within, next to or linking Special Protection Areas (SPAs), Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) or other sites which already support wading birds
Sites which may be unsuitable for this action include:
- sites with botanical interest, where hydrological changes could damage plant communities
- washlands and other areas that flood during the wader breeding season
You can create or restore wet grassland by establishing a sward using:
- [GR1: Create or restore grassland habitat]
- [GR2: Standard seed mix for grassland habitat]
- [GR3: Floristically enhanced seed mix for grassland habitat]
Maintaining and restoring wet conditions

You will need a good water supply to maintain the right conditions for breeding waders. This may be from ditches managed with high water levels, other watercourses, springs, or groundwater, but not just rainfall. If you are actively raising water levels, you will need to be able to do this without affecting neighbouring land.

During the spring and early summer (until the end of June) you will need to have surface standing water and bare wet soil (in scrapes, gutters, foot drains, flushes, blocked grips, splash pools) providing around 300m of wet edge on average per ha.

You can create scrapes and gutters using the capital item WN2: Creation of scrapes and gutters. You can maintain existing scrapes and gutters using CSP11: Manage scrapes and gutters supplement, so they provide areas of bare, wet soil for waders to feed.

Alternatively, if managing for curlew or snipe, you could provide soggy damp ground conditions covering at least 10% and ideally up to a third of the area.

On peat and permeable soils, the water table would ideally be within 20cm of field level.

During the winter (at least between early November and late February), maintain shallow surface flooding, ideally with:
- a range of depths from 1cm to 30cm and up to 50cm on larger sites
- cover of 5% to 30% of the area, which can change naturally to prevent stagnation
- muddy edges for waders to feed in
Where possible, avoid large areas of grassland being under water. If too much of the soil is flooded for long periods, food sources like earthworms will be lost.

In the spring, to stop nests being washed out, gradually reduce surface flooding to 5% to 10% of the area or the area set out in your agreement.

If your wet grassland is not typical, your Natural England adviser may need to adapt this advice to your site.

Managing sward heights in spring and early summer

Ideally graze, or if agreed with your adviser, cut, the sward to provide the right sward conditions for the target wader species during the breeding season.

Where managing for lapwing, redshank and curlew (together on the same site), ideal conditions consist of:

a mosaic (a combination) of short (over at least 50% of the field), medium (over around 30% of the field) and tall (over less than 20% of the field) vegetation

rushes which are scattered and cover no more than 30% of the field (5% to 15% for lapwing and redshank)

Where managing for redshank, ideal conditions consist of:
- a mosaic of vegetation heights with 50% to 70% short and 30% to 50% medium, tussocky vegetation
- rushes in scattered clumps covering no more than 15% (ideally 5% to 10%) of the area
Where managing for lapwing, ideal conditions consist of:
- a mosaic of vegetation heights with 70% short and 20% medium in scattered clumps or occasional tussocks
- no more than 10% rush cover
Where managing for curlew, ideal conditions consist of:
- a mosaic of vegetation heights with at least 50% short, 20% to 30% medium and 20% to 30% tall
- rushes in scattered tussocks, clumps or patches in a mosaic with open areas of shorter vegetation
Where managing for snipe, ideal conditions consist of:
- a mosaic of vegetation heights, with short to medium swards covering 30% to 40%, and medium to tall swards covering up to 70% of the area
- tall vegetation in scattered tussocks or clumps with open areas between them
Suggested vegetation heights:
- short vegetation: less than 5cm
- medium vegetation: 5cm to 10cm
- tall vegetation: 10cm to 50cm
If your wet grassland is not typical, your Natural England adviser may need to adapt this advice to your site.

Managing sward heights in autumn and winter

Graze and, if necessary, cut during the summer and autumn aiming to produce areas of short open grassland of between 5cm and 15cm from the beginning of November until the beginning of March. This will benefit grazing wildfowl like swans, geese and wigeon.

Keep some rushes or tussocky grass, like tufted hair grass. They provide shelter for invertebrates and amphibians, and camouflage for birds like snipe.

Grazing

Grazing with cattle is ideal, as they create a mix of longer and shorter vegetation and bare ground. Lapwing and redshank, in particular, require a short sward during the wader breeding season which can usually be achieved by lightly grazing from April or May. Fields which support curlew and snipe may not need to be grazed until later in the summer.

If you are grazing during the breeding season, reduce the risk of nest trampling by:
- grazing at a low stocking density – usually less than 1 livestock unit per hectare (LU/ha)
- not grazing with sheep or ponies while waders are nesting
- grazing with calmer livestock such as suckler cow herds
- moving herds regularly if you are grazing rotationally
- not turning the herds out from their winter housing directly onto fields in this action
Once birds have finished nesting you may need to increase the stocking rate to achieve the required sward heights by autumn. Remove livestock when the ground gets too wet

Cutting

You would not normally ‘shut up’ fields for cutting – you usually need to graze grassland to get the right sward conditions in the spring and early summer. In some situations, such as hay meadows which support curlew, if agreed with your adviser you may ‘shut up’ fields for a cut which can be taken after the birds have finished nesting.

You can maintain short open swards before winter by cutting or topping between August and October. You could do this either where grazing has not removed the season’s grass growth, or to help manage rushes.

You may need to remove cuttings by gathering or baling to prevent build-up of litter and nutrients, especially on species-rich grassland.

Managing weeds and rushes

The presence of rushes and tall weeds can make wet grassland less suitable for breeding waders. You can manage weeds and rushes by cutting, grazing, spot treatment and weed wiping. The use of herbicides may not be allowed on some sites. Make sure you use spot treatment and weed wiping equipment correctly, and graze down the wildflowers and grasses so that the rushes and weeds can be treated without touching the non-target plants.

Boundary hedgerows, trees and scrub

Waders require open grassland with clear ‘sight lines’ so they tend to avoid nesting in fields with trees, scrub and hedges, where the risk of predation can be higher. If fields with hedges do support breeding waders, maintain the hedges at less than 2m high so that nesting birds have good visibility of predator species. Manage Scrub and trees so that in-field cover is zero and cover over the ditches is less than 5%, or as set out in your agreement.

Managing predators

In some situations, breeding waders can suffer from excessively high chick losses due to predation by species such as foxes and carrion crow. Where predation is preventing waders from successfully rearing their young, and all the other management requirements are being delivered, consider predation management.

This could include both non-lethal measures (for example, temporary or permanent antipredator fencing) and legal predator control . Separate actions and capital items are available to support this.

Disturbance from recreational activities

It’s important to minimise disturbance during the autumn and winter, so that waders and wildfowl can spend as much time as possible feeding. Regular disturbance will result in them not being able to take on enough food to maintain their body weight during the cold winter months, which can result in reduced breeding success. This means it’s best to avoid recreational activities between October and February.

Sustainable wildfowling

You may be able to carry out, or allow others to carry out, sustainable wildfowling as long as it does not cause significant disturbance to the target birds and is agreed with your adviser. Wildfowling is a recreational sporting activity that involves the pursuit and shooting of wild ducks, geese and waders which spend the winter period in the UK. The sport is typically carried out on wet grassland between 1 September and 31 January.

Use a good working understanding of local tidal patterns and bird habits so you can intercept birds whilst they naturally move between their daytime feeding and night-time roosting areas, rather than deliberately disturbing them from their resting or feeding places.

Plan and limit visits to avoid overharvesting and frequent disturbance.

Complete bag returns on the same day of shooting to ensure bag records and harvest level data is accurate.

It is good practice to create temporal and spatial refuges. Temporal refuges are regular times of the day or week when no shooting takes place. Spatial refuges are areas of the site, which are appropriately located and managed, where no shooting takes place.

It is not appropriate to:
- release wildfowl within your site
- supplementary feed to attract waterbirds to your site
Use this wildfowling strategy template (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wildfowling-strategy-template) to plan wildfowling activities on your site.

Rules you must follow when wildfowling

You must familiarise yourself with the law before wildfowling. There are a variety of methods for taking wild birds that are illegal under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Wildfowling must not cause a significant or serious disturbance to the population of a species. You must not carry out activities which:
- change the local distribution of the population
- change the ongoing size of the population
- reduce the ability of the species to survive, breed or rear their young
Find out more in AEWA’s (Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds) guide on managing waterbird disturbance (https://www.unep-aewa.org/en/document/managing-waterbird-disturbance-short-guide-wetland-managers-draft-2).

Responding to climate change

Read Natural England’s publication: ‘Adaptation for habitats in Environmental Land Management Schemes’ (https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/5673659512127488) to help you consider your general response to climate change. You must continue to follow the mandatory activities for this CSHT action.