Bog-burning brings cause for concern
and sphagnum mosses. And these iconic landscapes also lock up vast stores of carbon and help hold back water. But in poor condition, when damaged by draining or burning, those benefits can be lost, releasing carbon and peat-stained water. The latter brings back happy memories of my twenty-eight years at Bleak House, Crowden, where we were cradled by Bleaklow and Blackhill and the water was always a shade of brown, with all manner of healthy additives, including frogs, frog spawn, desiccated rat, dodgy microbes and occasionally cow’s wee. I remember trying to convince my wife that it was good for us, and I am still sure to this day, that the cocktail of delights prevented us from catching such things as common as a cold.
Across huge swathes of the uplands in northern England, vegetation is burnt on a 10-25 year rotation to yield optimum conditions for producing the maximum number of red grouse for commercial shooting.
Despite large amounts of public money going in to the conservation of the English uplands, Natural England’s own figures show that only around 10 per cent of our finest wildlife upland peat-bog sites are in good condition. An RSPB assessment of the scale of burning on England’s upland peat-bogs has revealed at least 127 separate historic agreements or consents allowing burning of blanket bog on sites internationally important for birds and deep peat-land habitats.
The UK Government has confirmed all of those agreements are on areas managed for grouse shooting. In the past, many of the best, wettest areas of upland peat-bogs were drained to ‘improve’ them for sheep grazing and grouse production. Today, land managers burn vegetation to provide the optimum conditions for red grouse.
Natural England’s recently published evidence clearly establishes that burning vegetation on deep peat soils is preventing the recovery of the habitat and the species these protected sites are intended to look after. The RSPB now expects Natural England to use its own evidence to produce unequivocal guidelines to turn this situation around by bringing an end to burning on our protected upland peat-bogs.
Soils with a peat depth of more than 50cm are regarded as deep peat. Active blanket bog, included degraded bogs, are habitats of European importance for which the UK has legal obligations to protect and restore.
In addition to improving the conservation condition of deep-peat habitats, ending burning will secure vital stocks of carbon (stored over millennia as peat) and help improve raw water quality, reducing treatment costs.
Dr Mike Clarke, the RSPB’s Chief Executive, says, “England’s uplands are some of our most extensive and important landscapes. Our assessment shows they could be among our most damaged too. For the benefit of wildlife, the environment and wider society there is an urgent need to restore these landscapes by blocking drains, re-vegetating bare peat and bringing an end to burning.”
A number of organisations, including the RSPB, are working in local partnerships to restore degraded blanket bog in the North Pennines, North York Moors, Bowland, the Peak District and Dartmoor.
One third of the England’s blanket bogs can be found in the Peak District. The Moors For The Future project to restore and conserve these was established in 2003, supported by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The scheme has gone on to develop into a broad-ranging partnership with the National Trust, Natural England, United Utilities, Severn Trent Water, Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, Derbyshire County Council and the RSPB.
Its aim is to repair damage from erosion and pollution across the Peak District National Park by ‘stabilising’ the peat bogs - stopping erosion it its tracks – before gradually restoring the vegetation that used to live there.
The erosion has been caused by decades of pollution from Manchester, Sheffield and surrounding urban areas which has fallen as acid rain on the Peak District moors. The moorlands have also suffered from high levels of sheep grazing and from damaging fires, both deliberate and accidental. I am pleased to say that, in this area at least, there are signs of recovery and in the last year alone I have watched golden plover and dunlin, lots of that little dashing-falcon, the merlin, and best of all, new growth on them there hills. However, we cannot be complacent and the restoration must continue.