Peat bog errors can be reversed

Posted by Northumberland Wildlife Trust on Jul 7, 11 08:30 AM in Bloggers

By Conservation Officer Kevin O'Hara

What would the world be, once bereft, Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

So wrote the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins but how apt these words are for describing a whole host of issues surrounding many conservation tasks that we all face.

'Carbon footprints', 'sequestration', 'bargaining', 'carbon trade-offs' are strange terms we are all going to have to come to terms with. Whether Hopkins realised he held the key in his prophetic words is very dubious as it was his generation that was largely responsible for the present day condition of our last remaining 'carbon sinks' - our wetlands or, more precisely, our peatlands.

As a result of drained and damaged peatland, the UK alone emits 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year from these habitats, a significant contribution to our greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the UK is still very rich in peatland habitats having about 15% of the world's blanket bog. Covering an estimated three million hectares (12% of the UK land area), deep peat provides a store of at least 3,000 million tonnes of carbon - 20 times as much as is stored in the whole of the UK's forest biomass. Alas, much of it is in poor condition and as such it is losing carbon that affects us all.

The lowland resource, for example like the Fens, is in even worse condition, much of it turned over to food production and they are no longer sustainable.

One location I am involved with locally is Prestwick Carr; it is an archetypal example of what not to do with a peatland. Drained in the 1860s for agriculture it is now a low lying area of very poor land to the north of Newcastle. Little populated, it is an area of poor quality horsey paddocks, rough pasture and prone to flash flooding as a result of its continued drainage. Amongst this devastated land is one of the rarest habitats left in the world - a lowland raised mire - and yet we planted trees on it and continue to drain the peatland that surrounds it, so devaluing it not just as a wildlife resource but as a carbon sink. It is losing between three and 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide per ha per year because of the drying peat soils.

There is sufficient evidence available now to show that it is possible to halt these losses through habitat restoration and that this will have greenhouse gas benefits. On a local scale there is also evidence that it will reduce the flashy nature of the flood episodes. This also will have benefits on water quality issues, water colour and flooding elsewhere.

Peatland restoration is also a cost effective means of addressing climate change.

His words ring eerily and simply true of what we need to do to achieve some carbon banking: "O let them be left, wildness and wet!"

Contact Kevin with your wildlife tales at Kevin.O'Hara@northwt.org.uk

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