The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland E-Book

Clifton Bain

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 332

Beschreibung

Clifton Bain now completes his trilogy with this look at the Peatlands of Britain and Ireland. A source of fuel for many generations, they are now a haven for wildlife and plants as well as a storehouse of greenhouse gasses. Their social history is one of exploitation and the value of mending and restoring is a major theme of the book. Like its predecessors, The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland will be a sumptuous volume richly illustrated with photographs and with drawings by the wildlife artist Darren Rees.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain and Ireland in 2021.

Sandstone Press Ltd

PO Box 41

Muir of Ord

IV6 7YX

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

© Clifton Bain 2021

© Foreword 2021 Tony Juniper

© Drawings Darren Rees 2021

© Images as acknowledgements

© All maps RSPB 2021. Contain Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2019 © OpenStreetMap contributors, UKCEH Land Cover 2019, Corine Land Cover 2012 © European Environment Agency.

Editor: Alison Lang

The moral right of Clifton Bain to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The publisher acknowledges support from IUCN UK Peatland Programme, and the RSPB towards the publication of this volume.

ISBN: 978-1-914518-15-7

Cover and book design by Heather Macpherson at Raspberry Creative Type, Edinburgh. Printed and bound by Elma Printing & Finishing

FOREWORD

A Modern Perspective on Peatlands

Britain and Ireland’s peatlands comprise some of our most precious and evocative landscapes. From the vast expanses of blanket bog that smother the broad, undulating vistas of west coast Ireland and the north of Scotland to the valley mires of the southern heaths, and from the raised bogs of the north-west of England to the Fens of East Anglia, these wonderful natural systems are diverse in character.

My own forays as a naturalist and conservationist have taken me to many of these places, very often as part of some effort to save them from damage or destruction. Like many others, my motivation came from a growing appreciation of the wonderful wildlife that depends on such ecosystems, and also an appreciation of the unique circumstances that cause them to exist in the first place.

Peat is formed in wetlands, where water causes the decomposition of dead vegetation to be exceeded by its accumulation, over time leading to ever deeper deposits of plant material. This and other unique aspects of peatlands have long fascinated ecologists, although today it is increasingly clear how peatlands are not only of great interest, but also of great importance. Although for too long they have been regarded as desolate wastelands, we know now that peatlands are in fact hugely valuable.

Despite our growing appreciation of their significance, however, many peatlands remain under pressure and are in a process of progressive degradation. As they reveal the effects of deteriorating health, so damaged peatlands fulfil fewer of their previous functions, in turn leading to diminished value for both society and wildlife.

Rising carbon dioxide concentration in the air, the inundation of fields and homes after heavy rain, poor water quality and disappearing wildlife are all among the consequences, in turn creating costs and reduced value for people.

The good news is that not only can healthy peatlands be conserved, but damaged ones can be restored, in the process realising many benefits. In the pages that follow, readers can learn more about not only the nature and character of Britain and Ireland’s rich peatlands, but also the ways in which it is possible to place peatlands on the road to recovery, in the process reversing the effects of centuries of ignorance as to their true value.

Clifton Bain tells the story of these wonderful ecosystems not only with passion and clarity, but also with the kind of unparalleled insight that can only be drawn from more than three decades of study and advocacy. Vivid first-hand accounts bring the peatlands to life, and should the reader be inspired to get their boots on and get outside to see for themselves, then detailed maps will take you to where you need to go.

While the story of our peatlands is at times one of decline and damage born out of short-term expediency and a failure to see the bigger picture, this book gives life to a more modern perspective, wherein healthy peatlands can support a sustainable future, not only for wildlife but people too. More important still is the message that we have the means to restore peatlands, if only we choose to adopt them. That choice is one for society as a whole, which in turn will depend upon our collective awareness, and that is why this book is so important.

Dr Tony Juniper CBE, environmentalist and writer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland is intended as a celebration of the remarkable turnaround in the fate of our peatlands as society begins to appreciate their true worth. Throughout my career, I have met many experts and individuals committed to peatland conservation who have helped bring about this transformation and who have guided me on my continued journey of learning and enjoyment.

Working with the IUCN UK Peatland Programme has brought my peatland understanding to a level that has enabled this book to be produced. All those involved in that organisation deserve special mention for their commitment to peatland conservation. Integral partners include the Wildlife Trusts, specifically Yorkshire and Scottish Wildlife Trusts, and the RSPB, which between them have hosted the programme over the last ten years.

The programme has been bolstered by dedicated members of staff, currently Emma Goodyer, Sarah Proctor, Blue Kirkhope and Renée Kerkvliet-Hermans, and previously Joanna Richards, Jillian Hoy, Lyndon Marquis, Rea Cris and Mary Church, with chairs Rob Stoneman and Jonathan Hughes representing the Wildlife Trusts, and Stuart Brooks, formerly of the John Muir Trust and now with National Trust for Scotland. Long-standing steering group members include Pat Thompson and Olly Watts from the RSPB, Paul Vaight, formerly a Peter De Haan Charitable Trust trustee, Moors for the Future Partnership manager Chris Dean, Paul Leadbitter of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership, Andrew Coupar and Andrew McBride of NatureScot (previously called Scottish Natural Heritage), Ian Crosher and Iain Diack of Natural England, Peter Jones of Natural Resources Wales, Tim Thom of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Bruce Wilson of Scottish Wildlife Trust, Ben McCarthy of the National Trust, David Smith of South West Water, Richard Lindsay of the University of East London (my long-standing font of wisdom) and Professor Mark Reed of Scotland’s Rural College.

Their efforts are supported by a wider steering group that includes the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Natural England, the Welsh Government, Natural Resources Wales, the Scottish Government, NatureScot and the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). Representatives from many of these organisations have been present from the start and their collaboration has been essential in driving peatland conservation forward.

Special thanks to Des Thompson at NatureScot for once again providing wise advice just when needed and who firmly believed this book had to be written.

I am grateful to Ellen Wilson and Paul Britten for providing the maps and to Carl Mitchell and Mick Green as companions on the site visits as well as being eagle-eyed fact checkers.

My thanks to all those in my team and the steering group who gave advice and assistance in checking sections of text and to the others who kindly gave their help: Morag Angus, Robbie Carnegie, Brian Eversham, Catherine Farrell, Ben Gearey, Benjamin Inglis-Grant, Paul Harvey, Peter Jones, Helen Lawless, Nuala Madigan, Isabella Mulhall, Norrie Russell, Steve Sankey, Fiona Walker and Sue Whyte.

I am indebted to the many people who offered advice and guidance while planning and undertaking my site visits, including Matt Buckler, Peter Coldwell, Rebecca Dobson, Catherine O’Connell, Dave O’Hara, Mark McCorry, Chris Uys, Tristram Whyte and Arfon Williams.

While I managed to complete all my site visits before a global pandemic forced nationwide lockdowns, I was unable to complete the photography for all sites and I appreciate the help of all those who kindly provided images: Penny Anderson, Emma Austin, Dave Blackledge, Laurie Campbell, Robbie Carnegie, Iain Diack, Brian Eversham, Christine Hall, Lorne Gill, Benjamin Inglis-Grant, Eden Jackson, Peter Jones, Blue Kirkhope, Alan Leitch, Lyndon Marquis, the Moors for the Future Partnership, the National Museum of Ireland, Norrie Russell, Mike Perks, Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the Yorkshire Peat Partnership.

My special thanks to Robert Davidson, Alison Lang and Nicola Torch at Sandstone Press and Heather Macpherson at Raspberry Creative Type for seeing through this third book in the series, and to Darren Rees for once more providing such excellent artwork.

To my wife Karin, thank you as always for your patience and support and thanks also to my daughters Ellie and Kirsten who seem to have wriggled out of a trip to the bogs, so far.

Dubh Lochan Trail, Forsinard Flows

CONTENTS

Foreword by Tony Juniper

Acknowledgements

Contents

Introduction

The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland

Peatland

Bogs

Fens

Wildlife

Bog wildlife

Fen wildlife

Peatland archaeology

Bodies in the bog

Trackways

Preserved landscapes

Lost archives

From lost peat to lost words

Peatland Use

Bog iron

Peat as fuel

Commercial peat extraction

Cultivated peatlands

Built development

Peatlands’ true benefits

A new era for peatlands

Visiting peatlands

Using this guide

Key to maps

SCOTLAND

North-West Highlands and Northern Isles

Shetland

Orkney

The Flows of Caithness and Sutherland

Outer Hebrides

Lewis Peatlands

Grampian Mountains

Insh Marshes

Rannoch Moor

Moine Mhòr

Central Lowlands

Flanders Moss

Clyde-Forth Mosses

ENGLAND

Northern England

Peak District Moors

Yorkshire Dales & South Pennines

North Pennines

Midlands

Humberhead Peatlands

Marches Mosses

North-West England

South Solway Mosses

Eastern England

Cambridgeshire Fens

South England

Dartmoor Mires

WALES

North Wales

Anglesey Fens

Lake Vyrnwy

Mid Wales

Cors Fochno

Cors Caron

South Wales

Cors Crymlyn

IRELAND

Northern Ireland

Peatlands Park

Cuilcagh Mountain

Republic of Ireland

Ballycroy

Connemara

Central Plain

Wicklow Mountains

Safety and access

Selected bibliography

Useful websites

Photo credits

Owenduff Bog, County Mayo

INTRODUCTION

People are often unaware that peatlands can be found close to most of our urban centres, providing a relaxing, uncluttered, airy escape. They also form some of our most dramatic remote landscapes, where not a single built structure can be seen from horizon to horizon. The mental and physical health benefits of walking or cycling among such wide-open spaces are but some of the assets of this fascinating environment. Although I have studied peatlands throughout my career, I am still enthralled and energised by my visits. The tremendous achievements made in recent years towards securing the future of our peatlands allow us all the opportunity to enjoy a day out on the bog. As with my other two books, The Ancient Pinewoods of Scotland and The Rainforests of Britain and Ireland, this latest guide encourages readers to get out and experience some of our greatest natural wonders while better understanding their importance.

This book also marks a celebration, recognising the support of the numerous partners across government, conservation bodies, scientists and private land managers who have helped us firmly enter the new era for peatlands.

A keen hillwalker since my teens, my acquaintance with peatlands was initially a casual one. Boggy ground was something to be carefully avoided when on the moors. I would admire the spongy, colourful mosses and intriguing carnivorous plants but otherwise gave these sodden places little thought. However, peatlands would later become a frequent staging post in the development of my career, more by chance than intention.

My first job after university was with the RSPB in North Wales, investigating the decline in breeding birds on peatlands in the Denbigh Moors. Moving back to Scotland in the late 1980s, I was a foot soldier in the environmental campaign to stop commercial forestry planting from destroying the Flow Country peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland. The issue attracted considerable media attention, partly through the involvement of celebrities who had financed the new forests as a tax benefit, unaware of the environmental harm being caused.

One of my tasks at the RSPB was to catalogue the results of breeding bird surveys carried out across the Flows. It was hard to comprehend some of the figures, with thousands of pairs of breeding wading birds being recorded. Sitting at my desk in Edinburgh, I couldn’t wait for my first chance to experience such a concentration of wildlife.

At that time, few people had heard of the Flows. This vast, remote peatland in the far north of the Scottish mainland was out of sight and out of mind even to those living in nearby towns. A first visit to the region cannot fail to be an emotional one. The train from Inverness to Thurso goes through the heart of the Flows. The lonely carriages are a mere speck in the landscape and pass mile after mile of open peatland, uninterrupted from horizon to horizon apart from the intrusion of those ill-conceived conifer plantations. At any time of year, the huge expanse of mosses patterned by pools of water is a spectacular treat, but it is the spring and summer months that offer the greatest reward, when the peatlands come alive with the calls of birds. Now officially recognised as the best example of an Atlantic blanket bog in the world and supporting some of the largest populations of peatland bird species in Europe, it is a travesty that this area was targeted for forestry.

The Flow Country controversy brought out some of the most dedicated and effective conservation efforts I have ever seen. Individuals persisted in championing this important cause despite personal and institutional abuse. I learned some important lessons at that time. Economics are a key force affecting our environment. Understanding the financial implications behind land use decisions is essential in resolving conflicts.

An equally important lesson was the appreciation that local people are vital in bringing about long-term solutions to environmental problems. Residents of villages and towns near the peatlands were initially bemused by attempts to protect such perceived ‘wasteland’ or were angry at the intervention of outside conservationists in their affairs. Conflict over peatland use across the country saw extreme cases of local protest where effigies of conservationists were strung up on mock gallows. Such acts were usually carried out by individuals fuelled by controversy-hungry media rather than being representative of the community, but they serve to highlight the local tensions at the time.

I also witnessed the power of well-presented, strong scientific evidence in influencing political decision makers. Demonstrating the international significance of the peatlands and their wildlife, as well as proving the economic folly of planting trees on peat, led to success for the Flows campaign. The tax incentives were removed, and protected site status was given to much of the peatland area. Public funding and European Union grants then enabled a long programme of partnership working with environmental bodies, government agencies, landowners and local communities supporting a shared agenda for the future well-being of the peatlands. Challenges remain, with ongoing threats from windfarms and other built development, but there is now a greater recognition that the Flows are something special and among the world’s most important natural treasures.

Forsinard Flows, Lookout Tower

My second phase of peatland conservation was in the 1990s. When working for the RSPB, I visited the lowland peatlands at Thorne and Hatfield Moors in South Yorkshire. A pleasant walk on a sunny summer evening turned into shock when I witnessed the devastation caused by industrial mining of peat to supply growbags for gardeners. I couldn’t believe that such a wonderful wildlife site could be stripped of its living layer by huge machines leaving behind an eroded moonscape of drained, bare peat. I learned that our planning laws allowed this destruction. Permission for peat extraction had been granted several decades previously, at a time when the peat was cut by hand. The planning authorities were unable to halt the modern operations without hefty compensation to the peat mining companies.

A major campaign was launched to discourage gardeners from using peat and to halt the destruction of Thorne and Hatfield Moors and many other wonderful peatlands across Britain and Ireland. National conservation charities joined with local naturalists and individual ‘defenders of the bog’ to challenge the multinational companies who saw profit in selling peat. The celebrity face behind the peatlands campaigning at that time was Professor David Bellamy, who enthused about every living detail of the peatlands and was famous for his television appearances, getting right down among the mosses and bog creatures. In the end, the government conservation agency, Natural England, stepped in to purchase Thorne and Hatfield Moors for the nation, and several other commercially worked peatland sites. Peat mining continues elsewhere, but there is now a government target for the use of peat in gardening and horticulture products to be phased out in the UK by 2030.

My conservation career later moved into areas of policy, such as biodiversity and climate change. I began to appreciate that conserving the natural environment could not be done by arguing the importance of wildlife alone. Additional tools are needed to tackle the overwhelming economic forces that influence change in land use and development pressure. Conservation now highlights that helping nature helps us, whether providing vital services such as jobs, well-being and health benefits or natural resources such as clean drinking water. Economic studies are increasingly being deployed to demonstrate the financial implications of our use and abuse of the natural environment. Quantifying nature in monetary terms does not mean we are selling out or belittling the intrinsic or aesthetic value of wildlife, but is simply ensuring that nature is at least accounted for in the face of harsh economic decision making.

These formative years helped build an approach to environmental issues that recognised the strength of partnership working and the need to understand the pressures behind a problem. Identifying people’s motivations for the way in which they manage the countryside allows the development of alternative solutions for delivering their needs while protecting the environment. Sheep farmers whose stock is too heavily concentrated on the peatland and is causing damage may be willing to protect the area if government funding is directed at supporting farmers for having healthy peatlands instead of incentivising ever more sheep. This is a far more constructive solution than simply banning sheep grazing in these areas, which would be costly to monitor and would fan the flames of hostility towards peatlands. As it is, many farmers now welcome assistance in repairing the eroded deep gullies of a damaged bog where livestock could have become trapped.

In 2009 I was offered the chance to be the director of an organisation aimed at conserving peatlands. The year before, a peatland conference organised through the Wildlife Trusts and the Peter De Haan Charitable Trust (PDHCT) had been held in London. The event exposed frustration that the importance of peatlands was not widely appreciated and that efforts to conserve them were fragmented, uncoordinated and often compromised by conflicting policy decisions. The conference concluded that a new partnership should be created to champion peatlands and bring together policy makers, land managers, environmental organisations, and scientists. The Peatland Programme was formed under the umbrella of the UK’s national committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – a rather lengthy title, but it provided the credibility of a globally renowned conservation body and an established partnership of government and environmental organisations.

The IUCN UK Peatland Programme (IUCN UK PP) was launched in 2009 with a grant from the PDHCT and at an early stage it brought together organisations with experience in managing large-scale projects to restore peatlands. These restoration initiatives were delivered through broad partnerships of local people, land managers, wildlife charities and public bodies in areas such as the Flows, the Peak District, the North Pennines, Yorkshire and Exmoor. Fantastic work was being carried out in these areas to demonstrate that past damage to peatlands could be tackled cost-effectively. Remedial works were possible even at a large scale, covering thousands of hectares. The experience of the staff who represented these projects was a great asset to the programme. They understood the problems and what needed to be fixed; they had heard all the arguments and overcome them through bringing people together and building consensus towards looking after the peatlands.

Major grants from the PDHCT and more recently the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation have provided core funding for the programme. The IUCN UK PP steering group and the employed staff team provide a constant point of reference and act as a catalyst for all those working on individual projects and initiatives across the UK. Redressing centuries of peatland damage and securing a new era for peatland conservation needs this constancy of effort and it is hoped that an ongoing umbrella body for peatlands can be maintained.

One of the first tasks of the programme was the Commission of Inquiry. This work engaged scientists to assess the state of our peatlands, the impacts of human activities and the benefits that arise when peatlands are restored and conserved. The inquiry gathered clear evidence of the huge significance of peatlands as a carbon store, for drinking water, for flood management and as homes for important wildlife. Published in 2011, the inquiry report was the largest review of peatland science ever undertaken in the UK, with over three hundred responses to the draft text.

Peat turves and blanket bog, County Mayo

The results were presented in the House of Lords, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. There was a real sense of enthusiasm at these events, with government ministers and members of parliament quickly appreciating the need for action. This led to the UK’s four devolved government environment ministers issuing a joint action statement on peatlands, in February 2013, giving a commitment to their conservation. This has been taken further, with each country establishing specific peatland funding schemes to support private landowners in restoring their peatlands.

The UK’s first peatland strategy was launched in April 2018, setting a framework for peatland conservation through to 2040. There is still some way to go to ensure all UK countries are working to the same speed. Scotland has been the first to set targets for peatland restoration, with associated funding now embedded in its policies, with England, Wales and Northern Ireland well on the way in establishing their own peatland strategies. Strategies themselves are never the most exciting initiatives but, as ministers come and go, they are vital in providing a long-term commitment, clear targets and benchmarks against which to check progress.

Internationally, the IUCN global body has highlighted the plight of peatlands with a resolution for all countries to ensure peatland conservation strategies are in place. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is helping to promote peatlands and a Global Peatlands Initiative has been launched with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme. The UK is among the world leaders in peatland conservation and has several decades of practical peatland restoration and management experience that it can share with other countries. International networking also allows for reciprocal learning from countries whose peatlands may be different but essentially face similar problems. The IUCN UK PP has produced UK and international ‘Demonstrating Success’ reports, showcasing different peatland restoration projects. Restoration sites are all included on the ‘Peatland Projects’ interactive map available on the IUCN UK PP website. The huge practical experience of those involved in repairing peatlands has also been drawn together to provide an online guide to peatland restoration methods.

A key initiative of the IUCN UK PP was the development of the Peatland Code. Recognising that government funding for peatland restoration alone was insufficient to meet the scale of the problem, the Peatland Code was designed to attract private funding. The rationale behind the code is that businesses can pay for the restoration either to support climate change efforts or to secure some benefit such as improved biodiversity, reduced flooding or drinking water improvements. The Peatland Code process provides assurance to potential investors that the projects can deliver the claimed climate change or other benefits. Increasingly, businesses are appreciating that their financial bottom line is affected by the state of our environment and that supporting nature can save them money in the long term. It is hoped that the benefits of repairing and looking after a bog can become as popular and widely appreciated as planting trees.

As a partnership body, the IUCN UK PP operates across dozens of projects and engages individuals from many different sectors. A series of annual conferences provide platforms for sharing experience and allowing an all too rare opportunity for scientists, policy makers, land managers and peatland practitioners to get together and see peatland conservation work at first hand. Each year, the conference has moved around the UK, starting in Durham, and has been well attended and enjoyed. As one renowned peatland expert, Richard Lindsay, noted, ‘after years of working with a little regarded topic on the fringes, it’s amazing to see so many people gathered to talk about peatlands.’

Through this broad partnership, numerous organisations are now championing peatlands, including land-managing interests such as the sporting estates, water companies and even the Forestry Commission. The spread of involvement stretches from the north of Scotland to South-West England, Wales and Ireland, and also to the far reaches of the Falkland Islands, the most peat-dominated of the UK Overseas Territories.

Teal (Annas crecca) on Dubh Lochan, Forsinard Flows

Decision makers and wider society are beginning to understand the costly consequences of damaging our peatlands and the true benefits of keeping them healthy. There is much more education and engagement to be done to raise awareness of the existence and importance of peatlands in the public view. At a time of great economic upheaval and austerity, getting peatlands on the public radar is challenging but a key focus of the programme.

If peatlands are to continue to be valued and recognised as important by decision makers and land managers, we all need to show our support and appreciation. Only through people experiencing and understanding the true importance of our peatlands can the investment of taxpayers’ money be justified to restore and maintain them. Research into remote rural communities’ views of peatlands shows that, where people become involved in looking after and managing a peatland, they develop a greater understanding and appreciation of its qualities. Many rural communities have a sense of stewardship and are happy to support the protection of peatlands once they understand the issues, even though this may mean a change from some older ways of managing them.

I am a great believer in getting people from all walks of life to visit peatlands as the best way to create a lasting impression. It doesn’t always go to plan, however. Falling into a bog is a rite of passage for even the most experienced peatland expert, and a great social leveller. Several times I’ve over-enthusiastically stepped off a boardwalk and landed up to my waist in peat, along with my bosses, directors of peat mining companies, television presenters and civil servants. One thing for sure is that such intimate experience of a peatland will long be remembered.

Most peatland visits are safe, pleasurable and dry, and the more that people visit them and find out what they are truly like the better. Thanks to innovative and inspiring peatland conservation and restoration initiatives there are many peatlands to visit across Britain and Ireland with excellent all-ability access. The sites detailed in this book represent just a sample, to give the reader a flavour of the huge diversity of peatland experiences on offer. The Peatland Projects map available on the IUCN UK PP website displays a wider range of peatland sites, including Eyes on the Bog locations at which peatland condition is being monitored as part of a long-term citizen science initiative.

The Peatlands of Britain and Ireland

Often described as the Cinderella habitat, peatlands have long been considered worthless, even malevolent, or simply a resource to exploit. Yet they are immensely important to our well-being and can display great beauty. These enchanting, saturated, watery landscapes can at first appear rather muted, with wide vistas displaying only pastel shades of browns and greens, but closer inspection reveals a wealth of colour and pattern, rich in the spectacle and sounds of unusual wildlife. This natural state of a peatland contrasts with the blackened, bare, eroding expanses that have been damaged in an often-failed attempt to make peatlands profitable. Our shocking treatment of this wonderful part of our natural environment not only threatens wildlife but has left a legacy of degradation that now imposes great cost on society as we lose the natural benefit of peatlands.

Peatlands are characterised by waterlogged conditions that restrict decay and allow dead plant material to build up over time as peat. Blanketing our mountain tops and engulfing low-lying land, peat is one of our most abundant soils, not surprisingly in such a persistently wet country. Peatlands also pervade our culture, from the drama of Wuthering Heights and Sherlock Holmes’s canine mystery on Dartmoor to the aromatic basis for whisky and the modern use of peat in gardens. Widely known, but now practised by few, is the craft of turf cutting to provide fuel in remote rural areas.

Harestail cotton grass, Hatfield Moors

Going back over millennia, the association of people with peatlands has been uniquely captured by their excellent preserving qualities that have allowed us to come face to face with the actual bodies of our ancestors as well as incredible cultural artefacts. One of my earliest associations with peat was from my father’s bookcase in the form of a small paperback book, The Bog People by P. V. Glob, with its captivating cover of the perfectly preserved Tollund Man who had lived over 2,000 years ago. The serene, calm face belied the fact that this individual had been hanged and placed in the bog as part of an Iron Age ritual.

The peatland story is one of contradictions. Often disregarded as wasteland, peatlands are immensely valuable. Visions of dangerous, boggy swamps with their derogatory associations contrast with the reality of colourful carpets of mosses bejewelled by clear pools of water and hemmed with delicate, white cotton-grass heads.

Over the centuries, the draining and clearing of our peatlands has been one of the most extensive acts of environmental destruction ever imposed on this country. Worldwide, the situation is just as desperate in many other hotspots of human population, where extensive peatlands in Europe, America and South East Asia have been drained and exploited. Global news coverage has shown the human suffering resulting from huge fires on drained peatlands in Indonesia and Russia extending over thousands of kilometres. The economic damage from these fires was estimated at several billion US dollars.

We are now beginning to understand the full costly consequences to society of our peatland legacy. Global leaders herald their importance and action is being taken to conserve them. Huge projects are underway to repair damaged peatlands and reinstate their watery conditions, to allow wildlife to thrive and help secure the benefits we can all derive from them.

With awareness of their international conservation importance there has been considerable investment by governments and environmental charities to provide protected sites with excellent visitor facilities, offering the opportunity to get into the heart of these wildlife treasuries.

Peatland

The term ‘wetland’ is used to describe areas inundated or saturated by water and where vegetation is specially adapted to thrive in the waterlogged soils. Peatlands are a type of wetland where conditions limit the breakdown and decay of dead plant material, which then accumulates to form peat. In a natural, wet state the peat continues to build up year after year and can become several metres deep. Remarkably, peat under these conditions contains fewer solids than milk, yet we can walk on it, albeit tentatively, due to the structure of the preserved plant material that forms a supporting lattice. This feature of being neither fully solid earth nor liquid water, an in-between place, may explain the ancient reverence for peatlands as places for pre-Christian rituals and religious ceremonies.

For many people, peatlands are associated with the dark stuff: the loose, fluffy compost in a growbag or the aroma of burning peat turves. But this is just the peat soil, the mainly dead part of the system. The key feature is the living layer of plants that thrive in wet conditions, maintaining the peat deposit and continuously adding new material. Peat is generally formed at a rate of one millimetre a year, which means that material laid down around the time of the Viking occupation lies only a couple of spade depths from the peatland surface. Where a peatland has its layer of natural vegetation and is laying down peat, the area is called a mire. If the living layer has been destroyed, for example through the peatland being drained, the deep peat deposits are still called peatlands but are no longer peat-forming mires.

The accumulation of peat occurs where the production of plant material exceeds decay from the action of bacteria and fungi. Water saturation leads to anaerobic (without oxygen) and cooler conditions that inhibit the decay. Water balance is critical, with levels having to remain stable just below the surface of the plant layer for the system to form peat. Too shallow and oxygen is available for the decomposing organisms; too deep and the plants become submerged and can’t grow. In colder and wetter climates of the world, the predominant peat-forming plants are the mosses and the sedges as well as ‘cushion plants’ in the Southern Hemisphere. In hotter, subtropical and tropical parts of the world, peat is composed largely of the roots of grasses, rushes or rush-like species and trees.

As plants grow they remove carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and this is stored in the structure of the plant. The preserved plant material in peat retains that plant carbon but, when exposed to oxygen through damage to the peatland, bacterial decay breaks down the peat and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is this release of carbon that is of such concern in the fight against climate change. UK peatlands alone store over three billion tonnes of carbon. If only a fifth of that were released into the atmosphere it would equate to the country’s entire annual carbon emissions from all our activities.

Peatland distribution is mainly determined by climate and topography. They are especially abundant in the cold regions of northern Europe and in the wet oceanic and humid tropical countries. Where the climate is less than ideal, peat can still form in localised areas where landscape features allow water to collect, such as on flat, level land. Incongruous as it seems, even Australia and Uganda have their peatlands.

Globally, peatlands cover only three per cent of the land area but are known to occur in ninety per cent of the countries of the world. It is said that the other ten per cent of countries just haven’t found their peatlands yet. As recently as 2012, a deep peatland larger in extent than England was discovered in the Congo Basin.

Figure 1 World distribution of peatlands (Global Peatland Database 02/2020, Greifswald Mire Centre).

Britain and Ireland with their northern latitude and cool, wet climate are among the world’s most peat-dominated countries. Just over a quarter of Ireland is covered by peatland. In the UK, ten per cent of the land area is currently peatland mire, with the majority in Scotland, supporting some of the deepest peat deposits in Europe – up to ten metres deep in parts. In the UK Overseas Territories, the Falkland Islands are over ninety-four per cent peatland, making them the most peat-dominated of any country in the world. At one time, Britain was almost a third covered in peatland, but most of the once vast expanses of peatlands in the lowlands now lie under agricultural land and built development or have wasted away entirely through drainage and cultivation. Nonetheless, I am not aware of a single county across our islands that has no remaining peatland of some sort.

Figure 2 Extent of peatland in Britain and Ireland (from Artz, R. et al 2019. The State of UK Peatlands:an update, IUCN UK Peatland Programme, Edinburgh; and Connolly, J and Holden N.M. 2009. Mapping peat soils in Ireland: updating the derived Irish peat map. Irish Geography 42. 343 - 352)

Over eighty-five per cent of the world’s peatlands are in a near-natural state. This somewhat surprising fact is due to intact peatlands occupying vast remote areas of Canada, Alaska and Siberia, where pressure from humans has been limited. In more populated areas, such as central Europe and South East Asia, much of the peatland has been drained and cultivated.

In Britain, over eighty per cent of the remaining peatlands have been damaged by drainage for agriculture and forestry as well as burning, grazing by livestock, peat cutting and pollution. In Ireland, most of the country’s extensive lowland peatlands have been stripped away by commercial peat extraction to supply peat as fuel for electricity power stations. Once a peatland is drained and the vegetation is changed or lost, the peat that has built up and been stored for millennia wastes away as it dries out, decomposes and is eroded by wind and rain.

Bogs

Bogs are peatlands where the vegetation obtains all its water from direct precipitation, in areas of high rainfall and humidity. They tend to be nutrient poor and acidic as they have no access to the minerals and salts in water from the surrounding soils because of the accumulated thickness of peat. The vegetation is composed mostly of sphagnum mosses and sedges, which are among the few plants to thrive in these acidic conditions.

The sphagnum mosses are a fascinating and important part of the peatlands’ functioning. Sphagnum plants grow continuously upwards while the lower parts die but are resistant to decay. Large empty cells allow the plant to store up to twenty times its own weight in water, helping keep the bog surface saturated. The plant also creates acidic conditions, making the environment ideal for itself and less so for competing plants.

There are around a dozen different species of bog sphagnum in various tones of colour, from vibrant green and gold to deep bright red. Some species form hummocks and others grow as low-lying carpets or occupy wet hollows. These high and low features create patterns of concentric rings spreading out from the centre of the bog that become more distinctive as the peatland gets older. The thin living layer of moss on the surface of the bog, where the water table fluctuates and allows oxygen to penetrate, forms the ‘acrotelm’. The underlying dead material that constitutes the bulk of the peat soil is called the ‘catotelm’.

Blanket bog, Tynehead Fell, North Pennines

Peat erosion gully with 3 metres deep peat layer, North Pennines

Blanket bogs are typically found in upland regions where precipitation – in the form of rain, sleet, snow, mist or hill fog – is highest, and where conditions are ideal they can form peat on steep ground, even on slopes with a gradient of more than 30o. As suggested by their name, blanket bogs spread out over the hilltops in an unbroken mantle of peat that can extend many miles. The largest blanket bog landscape in the UK is the Flows, sometimes referred to as the Flow Country, covering over 400,000 hectares. Blanket bogs are a distinctive and striking feature of the mountainous regions of Britain and Ireland, from Shetland in the north of Scotland to Dartmoor in South-West England, and from the west coast of Ireland to the Pennines in the north of England.