By Rachel Seddon
As I navigate my way across the open bog, scaling deer fences and scrambling out of collector drains and bog pools, I sometimes feel like I’m doing basic training, expecting at any minute for someone to bark orders at me, but all I hear are the barking of roe deer and the cries of buzzards overhead. There is a wealth of wildlife on the Forsinard Flows, Europe’s largest peatland – golden plover, greenshank, curlew, dunlin, hen harrier, scoter, sundew, bog bean, butterwort, bryophytes, 30 different species of sphagnum, dragonflies, damselflies, the list goes on. But there could be so much more, both in terms of density and diversity. It shocks me that in my parents’ life-time, in a society that’s been aware of climate change for so many years, people thought it would be a good idea in the 1970s and 80s to drain the Flow Country to make the land more productive and establish non-native conifer plantations, turning blanket bog from an important carbon sink to a carbon source and destroying one of the UK’s most precious habitats. It’s partly thanks to the RSPB that this damage is being reversed. Slowly but surely parts of the Flows are being bought up, the trees felled and the bog restored to what it used to be.
A photograph showing the vastness of the Flows and how the plantations dominate. A grey, felled area can be seen on the right hand side between the two plantations, which is now being restored back to blanket bog.
It saddens me that in such a short time so much damage has been done that it’ll take hundreds of years for the bog to return to its original state. This is where the Forest-to-Bog Restoration Project comes in and scaling deer fences and scrambling out of collector drains is part of everyday life for me as an Intern.
I’ve worked with the RSPB Forsinard Conservation Science team for the summer, helping collect data for the project whose aim is to compare different methods of drain blocking and tree removal in the restoration of blanket bog. These findings will then influence future restoration methods. Three types of plot are being monitored:
1) Areas of forest that will be felled and the blanket bog restored
2) Control plots in which the forest will not be felled
3) Open bog plots that are areas that escaped plantations and are not in need of restoring.
Each month a dipwell round is carried out, involving blowing down a tube inserted into a piece of piping in the ground to measure the depth of the water table. With approximately 270 dipwells to get round it really does take a month!
A photo of myself at one of the dipwells.
Throughout June short bird and invertebrate surveys were also carried out at the dipwell sites and from July-September vegetation transects were surveyed, involving a steep learning curve of trying to identify bryophytes and sphagnum mosses. Coming up with ways to remember the complicated Latin names proved entertaining to say the least! With felling seeming to be increasingly imminent, each dipwell had to be marked so they can be found again once felling has finished. This involved, amongst other things, measuring the length of the access furrow to the dipwell, attaching brightly coloured tape to the dipwell itself and spray painting the bases of the trees around it with red paint. The boundaries of the plots have also been marked by tying different coloured tape to the trees according to the various felling techniques. Needless to say, the forest is looking rather festive! Now all that’s left is to wait for felling to commence, and continue the monthly dipwell round of course.
My time at Forsinard has gone remarkably quickly and it’s been a real privilege to have been involved in the project. I’ve learned so many new field skills, including how to cope with large numbers of midges, clegs and deer keds! I hope that in 40 years time I will return to Forsinard and visit the places I’ve worked in. I hope by then they will be transformed from wastelands of plantation to recovering bog, inhabited by an ever-growing wildlife community.
Blanket bog can be beautiful and rich in wildlife – it’s well worth restoring!