The power of peatlands

Why is peatland so important, isn’t it just an unproductive boggy wasteland? In fact, peat moors, like the one at Fleet Moss high above Wharfedale and Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales, are vital for nature. In addition, they are our largest carbon store on land and a recent study calculated that a 30cm peat layer stores at least the same amount of carbon as tropical rain forest over an equivalent area. If that wasn’t enough, the surface roughness on healthy peatlands helps to retain rainfall and sediment on the moor, mitigating flood risk as well as providing high-quality drinking water. 

Alas, degraded peatland doesn’t just fail to store the maximum carbon, it releases it. Dissolved organic carbon flows away in streams, causing the water to go brown. Removal of the brown staining is one of the major costs of any drinking water treatment plant, running into millions of pounds per year.

The PeatFix project is a trial within the wider restoration work of (YPP) Yorkshire Peat Partnership. YPP, led by YWT, is delivering peatland restoration across northern Yorkshire. Since 2009, it has brought 41,500 ha of upland peatland into restoration management. Jo Welch (YWT’s Peatfix Project Officer) explained that Fleet Moss was one of the most degraded peat moors in the Yorkshire Dales. She added that the aim of the Trust’s work is to restore the peatland to a functioning carbon absorbing, nature rich peat bog. The restoration has been a mammoth task, resulting in a rather alien-looking landscape peppered with coir bales to block erosion channels in the peat and leaky wooden dams to hold water and sediment on the moor.

In addition, to encourage the regeneration of vegetation, the YWT Peatfix project has worked with specialists TerrAffix, to spray a sophisticated mix of grass seed and other base materials including straw, compost and biochar onto bare peatland. A critical part of the project is then monitoring the moor to see which mix works most effectively. It was this monitoring work that I joined the YWT team on a sunny day in May to observe.

After an initial safety briefing from Jo, our small team set-off across the moor to inspect the sediment traps that are collecting the eroding peat. We hadn’t gone far when there was a shout of “stop!” There, right in the middle of the path was a tiny lapwing chick. Now, that would explain why the lapwing had been dive-bombing the team during the briefing!

That wasn’t the end of our wildlife spotting. During the day, we also spotted a hare, two short-eared owls, lots of lapwings and curlews. I was impressed at the team’s knowledge of mosses – and learned there is even one nicknamed drowned cat moss or in Latin Sphagnum cuspidatum 

Well, the lapwing chick was certainly a good start to the day. My plan was to observe the monitoring and take a few photos. The sediment traps were metre long half tubes, with closed ends, laid across the peat and fixed in place with stakes. I was soon invited to give emptying the tubes a go. This entailed balancing on a sledge to avoid further damaging the peat, while unscrewing the monitoring tube from its stakes and carefully brushing the eroded peat from the tube into a sampling bag.

The photo below shows Jo holding up two sample bags: one full from a control plot of bare peat; and a second from a plot that had been treated with PeatFix. Jo explained that the almost empty bag was from the area which had the best-performing mix of grass and base material. Peatfix could clearly be a game-changer for peatland restoration.

Jo explained that the restoration works themselves are delivered by specialist experienced contractors with low-pressure diggers and helicopters frequently on-site over the winter, moving stone and timber for the dams and reprofiling the gullies. In addition, the dangers of the bog itself (holes covered by moss, hiding thigh-deep pools), as well as the frankly miserable weather, mean that conditions can be tricky. I paraglide from the nearby Wether Fell and I can absolutely confirm that the weather at this height in the Dales can be very windy, wet and cold. The YWT Yorkshire Peat Partnership staff team are certainly a hardy bunch!

To find out more about our Yorkshire Peat Partnership project and how you can help protect Yorkshire’s peatlands please visit: www.yppartnership.org.uk and for more information on how you can go peat-free download The Wildlife Trusts free online guide here