£1.56m Lotto grant for valley peatland project
A NEW project in the uplands of south Wales aiming to restore a historic peatland landscape and help people enjoy their local outdoor space has been awarded £1.56m by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
With additional match funding from partners and Vattenfall’s Pen y Cymoedd Wind Farm Habitat Management Fund, the overall project value is now more than £2.8m.
The Lost Peatlands of South Wales project will be delivered by the Lost Peatlands Partnership comprising Neath Port Talbot Council (Lead), Rhondda Cynon Taf Council, Natural Resources Wales, Swansea University and Coed Lleol (Small Woods).
The project will provide an exciting programme of environmental improvements and community activities over the next four years.
Once referred to as the ‘Alps of Glamorgan’, the upland area between Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Taf in the south Wales Valleys was historically an open moorland landscape of boggy peatland. Today, commercial forestry plantations and renewable energy wind farms are a defining feature of this landscape – but large pockets of peat remain. Peat is invaluable in terms of carbon storage and wildlife habitat and is critical to climate change mitigation and reversing biodiversity decline.
The project will restore and manage more than 490 hectares of this historic landscape and habitats, including heathland, grassland and native woodland. Of particular focus will be the direct restoration of 256 hectares of previously afforested peat bogs and pools.
Such habitat improvements will encourage many wildlife species currently in decline to thrive again, birds like the skylark and nightjar; the dark green fritillary and small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies; and mammals like the water vole.