Forsinard – good news for wildlife, carbon and people

Forsinard – good news for wildlife, carbon and people

Recently I visited RSPB Scotland’s Forsinard Flows Reserve in the far north of Scotland and saw at first hand the difference we’re making for wildlife, local people and our efforts to combat climate change.

As I stood at the top of the fantastic new observation tower and chatted to visitors, I got a real sense of the scale of what is being achieved here – so big that you can see it from space!

RSPB Scotland has been active in this area since the 1980s when it became clear that the priceless blanket bogs were being ploughed and planted at an eye watering rate – not because it was a good place to grow trees but as a means for investors to pay less tax.  I remain proud of the campaign RSPB Scotland waged to close this tax avoidance loophole and thus prevent further destruction of the peatlands, and indeed I was intimately involved in it at the time. The campaign that ensued to close this loophole was lengthy but ultimately successful, as was the declaration of over 400,000Ha of land as SSSI, and EU Natura sites. Although, unfortunately, getting rid of the worst of the trees established on the flattest, deepest peat areas which held the most carbon, and the most birds is taking considerably longer, and comes at a hefty cost. 

This was always an ambitious programme of work but the size of that ambition and the progress towards achieving it has now grown as we embark with our partners on Flows to the Future, a huge project to restore the bogs and bring their benefits to a wide audience.  Forsinard is big (it’s the largest RSPB Reserve in the country) but FttF operates at a different scale altogether and we will now be working with our neighbouring landowners, with local communities, with schools and, through the virtual world, those who are unable to visit this special place in person. All of this ambition would be beyond us, if it was not for the HLF who have supported some 45% of the costs of this £10 Million project.

Scotland has the largest expanses of blanket bogs anywhere in the world and the most important of those are in Caithness and Sutherland with Forsinard right at their heart. Wildlife thrives here – carnivorous plants like sundews and butterworts, golden plovers, stately black- and red-throated divers, and the rather inaptly named common scoter (which is now a very rare breeding bird) all make them really special places.

But taking care of peatbogs is also great news for the local economy and communities.  For example, the EU LIFE project that ran from 2001-2006 to restore these habitats paid over £1m to 25 different local contractors.  Flows to the Future itself is predicted to invest something like £6m directly into the local economy and provide some 12 new jobs.  For an economically marginal area with few alternatives these are truly significant sums and none of it would have happened were it not for the RSPB and others with an interest in bog restoration making it happen. 

And last but not least there are the climate change benefits of restoring peatbogs given that they hold 10 times more carbon than in all the forests in the UK put together.

This giant store of carbon in Scotland makes a big difference to our efforts in tackling climate change in two ways. First, if the habitat is damaged, the surface layer of moss is exposed and degraded. If that happens, the peat dries and shrinks, carbon is continually lost to the atmosphere and Scotland’s greenhouse gas footprint gets bigger. That is what is happening in many of our peat land areas.

The second reason is more positive. In theory, a healthy intact peatbog should ‘suck’ carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away within the growing bog. This is akin to trees which as they grow take CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it in wood and vegetation. It could be described as natural carbon capture and storage. But, with pressures such as warmer temperatures, varying rainfall patterns, air pollution etc, we need to know if that theory is correct and if peatbogs today are accumulating carbon in this way and at what rate. If we can show that healthy peatbogs in Scotland have a positive greenhouse gas footprint, it will back up calls for more peatland restoration now and in the future.

Now, new research has just been published in a scientific journal which puts figures on how good Scotland’s bogs are at sucking in carbon[1] - technically known as sequestration. The bog studied was a near-pristine area at our Forsinard Flows reserve in the far north of mainland Scotland. The researchers from CEH[2] erected a flux tower on the bog and used sensors 3 metres up the tower to measure the gases moving in and out of the bog as it grew and respired over a 6 year period.

The results show that the peatbog studied consistently removes carbon from the atmosphere at a rate of 99g of carbon per square metre, every year. This equates to each square metre of bog accumulating 2.5mm of peat each year. That may be hard to picture but, with peatlands covering 17,270km² in Scotland (22% of our land area) there is potential for an enormous amount of carbon to be permanently removed ever year from the atmosphere by healthy and functioning peatbog habitats.

This research provides further strong evidence that healthy peatlands are good for the climate – both by securing stored carbon and permanently removing it from the atmosphere. But with 40% of monitored peatbogs being in an unhealthy condition this potential is not being realised.

So, for wildlife, carbon and economic reasons, the Government must reinvigorate its commitment to peatland restoration and find money make it happen. We know how to restore peatbog habitats, we have been doing it for years at Forsinard, we just need the resources to do more.That is why we warmly welcome the Scottish Governments National Peatland Plan.

Nature is part of the solution to climate change and economic development but only if we look after it. Nature is our only proven method for large-scale carbon capture and storage – so let’s help nature to help us, and in so doing conserve the sundews, the mosses, the strange insects and wonderful birds that abound in this watery, peaty world.