A tale of two W's: Wallasea Island and Walshaw Moor

I’ve spent the last few days focussing on the relationship between the European Union and the future of our wildlife and the special places that they call home here in the UK.

Last week European Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella and Biodiversity Minister Rory Stewart helped us to celebrate a significant milestone in our Wallasea Island Wild Coast project in Essex. This event marked the completion of the first-phase of this 670 hectare project to safeguard local wildlife and communities from rising sea levels while helping to provide habitat for climate colonisers such as black-winged stilt. It's a project that highlights the scope to work constructively with industry, in this case our main partners Crossrail, to restore a significant chunk of the Essex coast.

A picture of Wallasea taken on my previous visit - more of the site will look like this over time

It is clear that Mr Vella recognises the free services that nature gives us and believes that a healthy natural environment underpins our economy. He said “if we treat nature well, she will treat us well – if we treat her badly, she will treat us worse”. While praising the partnership between business, government and the RSPB, he also clearly understands the role of regulation in helping to achieve environmental objectives.

I trust that this (and the 520,000 people that spoke up for nature this summer) will influence his thinking as he considers the result of the consultation on the ‘fitness’ of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives (the Nature Directives).  The Nature Directives have a proven track record of saving nature here in the UK and across the EU (see here) are compatible with business objectives and are good for people.  

Cooperation on the coast is not, unfortunately, quite as apparent in parts of our English uplands.

Quite soon, Mr Vella we have to consider how best to respond to the legal complaint that we have made to the European Commission regarding Natural England’s handling of the management agreement struck with Walshaw Moor Estate, part of the South Pennies in West Yorkshire.  You can read a background to this case here.

I was in Brussels on Monday to meet officials to discuss progress with our complaint. As I have written previously, we believe that Natural England was wrong to allow burning on active and degraded peatland* within a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

Moor burn by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)

There is clear and compelling evidence that burning peatlands has significant negative impacts on peat hydrology, peat chemistry and physical properties, river water chemistry and river ecology (see here).  The Adaptation Sub-Committee (of the Climate Change Committee) showed that 76,000 hectares or 27% of blanket bog have lost peat-forming vegetation due to regular burning.  Moreover, continued burning will thwart restoration of peatland habitats (here).  By entering into an agreement that sanctioned burning, Natural England failed to take action to avoid damage - an obligation under Article 6.3 of the Habitats Directive.

However, as I have also reported (see here), our complaint has revealed the scale and extent of burning on deep peat across five SACs designated to protect blanket bog in the north English uplands. Over 150 existing management agreements that give permission to burn blanket bog in these protected areas are up for renewal over the next few years, so this case not only has a bearing on an individual site, it can affect the future management of large tracts of the English uplands.

Through research (here), we have also now revealed how the intensity of burning on peatlands has increased 11% per annum over the past decade and that 44% of 1km squares where burning was recorded was on deep peat rather than on habitats that are less sensitive to burning. The same research also reveals that SACs in northern England have the highest levels of burning of all UK upland SACs and that, across the UK, the area of deep peat soils burned inside SACs was 82% higher than the equivalent areas outside SACs – this means that damaging fires are intensifying in exactly the worst places for nature and the environment.

The drive to burn our hills lies in the desire of the grouse shooting industry to increase and maximise the shootable surplus of red grouse and, in this, they have been successful: current densities of grouse of English moors are higher than they have ever been with post-breeding density of 370 pairs per km2 recorded in 2014 which is six times the density recommended by Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in the early 1990s, nearly double that recommended by the Moorland Association and perhaps a hundred times the natural density of the red grouse which we see with their continental relatives the willow grouse.

We have a track record of working constructively with many industries – often when our initial encounters have been adversarial – and this is no different with grouse shooting. But, the scale of environmental damage means that status quo is not an option.  While some call for a ban, we continue to call for licensing of driven grouse shooting (see here) to secure the environmental benefits provided by well managed moors.  

The drive for intensification has a cost measured in lost wildlife and a landscape that is worse for our water supply and is compromised as store of carbon, boosting the release of green house gas emissions.

This is the context that Mr Vella must review as the European Commission is keen to reach a decision on out complaint in the next few months.  The European Commission, and ultimately Mr Vella, will have to decide...

...if it is right to allow burning to continue on internationally important peatland habitats when the evidence suggests this is bad for water, bad for greenhouse gas emissions and bad for wildlife
...if it is right for public money through agri-environment schemes to support an environmentally damaging regime
...whether Natural England’s emerging plan to restore peatlands is adequate.

Over the coming months, Mr Vella has an opportunity not only to defend the EU Nature Directives but also to ensure they are properly implemented in the English uplands. This is, of course, hot stuff politically, but Mr Vella’s job is to stand up for wildlife and uphold European law, so I trust he will reach the right decisions.

*Degraded bog refers to bog where the peat-forming surface vegetation has been lost or damaged in some way and includes bare peat, heather-dominated bog, drained peat, afforested bog, burnt bog, ‘over-grazed’ bog.

An active blanket bog is one that has retained typical peat-forming (bog-forming) vegetation types – especially mosses (especially Sphagnum mosses), sedges like bog cotton and even species like purple moor grass (Molinia). It follows that an active peatland must have the plants that form peat.