A new film that has been produced and filmed by RSPB Cymru shows how restoring Wales’ extensive peat bogs can help benefit wildlife and improve the quality of our environment by reducing flood risk and helping fight climate change by locking up atmospheric carbon. It also appears that farmers will lose less sheep, which can become trapped in the drainage ditches.
Many people see peat bogs as soggy barren places where you get stuck and lose your wellington boot in, or where archaeologists dig up the occasional perfectly preserved four thousand year old body! The closest many of us will get to a peat bog is picking up the bagged up stuff at our local garden centre to pot plants! (This is not recommended there are plenty of ecologically friendly peat free compost alternatives)
But peat bogs have been getting a rather lot of publicity lately. Last month a peat bog over six times the size of wales was discovered in the Congo. In recognition of the value of Welsh peat bogs, Alun Davies AM and former Minister for Natural Resources and Food recently announced the welsh governments ambitious plan to bring ‘ all welsh peatlands in to restoration management within 7 years’. And Wales has a lot of peat bog! An estimated 70,000 hectares of upland blanket bog scattered all the way from Snowdonia to Pembrokeshire and the South Wales Valleys. Although much of this is not in its pristine natural wet condition due to historic drainage and burning aimed at improving land for agriculture and post war afforestation.
So what exactly is Peat and why is it suddenly the coolest thing in town? Well peat is waterlogged soil, made up partially decomposed vegetation, mostly Sphagnum moss. Over the thousands of years that vegetation has been growing and compacting at a rate of a miniscule 0.5-1mm a year. It doesn’t sound like much but over millennia many Welsh, peat bogs have become 4-6 metres deep some even more. As the bog grows and the moss partially decompose to form peat it draws in that all important climate change gas Carbon dioxide and stores it as Carbon within the peat. And it’s incredibly efficient at doing that. Here are some mind blowing stats that you may not be aware of!
Although peatlands only cover around 3 percent of the world’s surface they contain more carbon than all the worlds rainforests. Peatlands are the UKs single most important terrestrial carbon store containing 20 times more carbon than all UK forests. In Wales nine times more Carbon is stored in peat than in all vegetation. And one last one. Although Britain is a very small island it does in fact contain an amazing 13% of the world’s upland blanket bog.
So just like cutting down rainforests releases carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere draining and drying out peat bogs does the same. It is estimated that those drained and damaged peat bogs in the UK currently pump out 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide a year that’s equivalent to the average emissions of 660,000 households ( that’s all the houses of Edinburgh Cardiff and Leeds combined!)
However- and this is the true value and potential of peatlands- unlike rainforests who take decades to restore, damaged peatlands can be returned through filling in drainage ditches with a digger to a functioning peat bog that is drawing in carbon in in matter of years. Indeed on average healthy peat bogs removes between 30-70 tons of Carbon per Km2 from the atmosphere annually. And not only that, making damaged bogs healthy again is relatively cheap. With rain fed blanket bogs blocking up the drainage ditches is highly cost effective. An experienced digger operator can put in a dam in quite a short space of time and you can quite quickly rewet a hectare of Peat bog.
So there is no doubt that restoring peatlands presents a massive opportunity to both the Welsh and UK government in helping meet their binding targets of reducing carbon emissions by 40% and 34% respectively form their 1990 level by 2020.
However, this is not the only benefit of Peatland restoration. For example 70% of our drinking water in the UK comes from upland areas, and it is vital that peat bogs are in good condition so that the water we drink is good quality and costs are kept low for customers.
Appropriately manged, restoring peat bogs can also provide habitat for some of Wales’s most endangered species like the curlew and the golden plover, which were once common in Wales but have seen a massive decrease in recent decades. The Golden Plover for example has seen more than 80% reduction in its numbers in recent decades in many areas. Furthermore there is increasing evidence that retaining water in upland areas will reduce flooding in lowland valleys.
Indeed one of the most important elements to consider when restoring peatland is no doubt the people who live and work in these upland areas. The vast majority of welsh uplands are farmed in some way and although some farmers are yet to be convinced that peatlands restoration will directly benefit their businesses some farmers like Glyn Roberts -who farms in the Migneit area of North wales- believes that the farming community should support the work for wider environmental reasons “At the moment I’m neutral on this” Mr Roberts said, “ but we as an industry have an obligation to do everything that we can to mitigate as much as we can against global warming and in this context I think it’s a good thing”.
The film looks at a partnership project between rspb Cymru, Dwr Cymru /welsh water, The National Trust, Snowdonia National Park, and natural Resources Wales funded by the welsh Government. the project involved work carried out on 485 hectares of peat bog across North Wales. In recent years been far larger Peatland restoration projects carried out, like the EU funded Active blanket bog in Wales project where 7,200 hectares of Peatland was rewetted in mid Wales and north Wales. It will be interesting to see in the next few years whether we will see more projects like this and whether the Welsh governments ambitious and admirable aim of bringing ‘all welsh peatlands in to restoration management within 7 years’will be fulfilled.
In the meantime if you ever find yourself walking across or maybe getting your wellie stuck in a squelchy bog in some of Wales’ spectacular upland areas stop and consider for a moment that the ground your standing on was not so long ago seen as a barren landscape with little value, but is now quite possibly one of the most important landscape in Europe and the world and may just hold the key to our and our children’s future.
If you want to view the film in English click on the English version below or just type in REF Peatland film in to YouTube. If you want to view in Welsh click on the welsh version below or just type in film Adfer mawndir in to YouTube. If your at the Royal Welsh Show this year, the film will be showing at the RSPB Cymru stand in the Countryside Care area from 3pm Monday 21st July until the end of the Show on Thursday 24th July
English version
Welsh Version