For Peat’s Sake

“What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

 

So wrote the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins but how apt are these words are for describing a whole host of issues surrounding many conservation tasks that we all face. ‘All’, yes ‘all’, we all face conservation based issues everyday whether we choose to believe in them or are just not aware of them, we all face them.

Climate changes are occurring, to what degree they are occurring is the only real argument we should be having and as such we have a real battle on our hands to try and curb the many issues inbound amongst all of the arguments. One such issue is our treatment of peat or more precisely peatlands, no I’m not going to bang on about garden peat substitutes people really shouldn't need reminding about it, I mean the wider benefits of this marvellous substance. I still chuckle when i think back when i was kid and David Bellamy delving into 'miullions and miullions of years', but he was so true, you can see feel and smell the past locked into peat.

A misty peat bog

Carbon footprints, sequestration, bargaining, carbon trade offs all strange terminology we are all going to have to come to terms with. Whether Hopkins realised he held the key in his prophetic words above is very dubious as it was his generation that were largely responsible for the present day condition of our last remaining ‘carbon sinks’, our wetlands or more precisely our peatlands. They drained them in the hope of creating further land to farm or live on, not realising their true value or folly years on.

As a result of these actions our drained and damaged peatland in the UK now emits approximately 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year from these habitats alone, a significant contribution to our greenhouse gas omissions. Yet the UK is still very rich in peatland habitats having about 15% of the worlds upland blanket bog still intact. Covering an estimated 3 million hectares (12% of the UK land area), deep peat stocks provides a store of at least 3000 million tonnes of carbon, which is twenty times as much carbon stored in the whole of the UK’s forest biomass. Alas despite this large figure much of it is in poor condition and as such it is loosing carbon all of the time and that affects us all.




A cross section of peat 'miullions and miullions of years'

 You don't understand? The simple version of events is that dry peat soils oxidise and release their goodness, as such it releases trapped carbon to the atmosphere wet peat doesn't, it locks carbon in, storing it within the damp soils.

The lowland peat resource, for example the Fens of the east of the country is in even worse condition, much of it turned over to food production at great expense to the consumer as they are now subject to such high maintenance costs through irrigation, fertilisers and herbicides etc. to keep production on these areas so high, they are now no longer sustainable.

One location I am involved with locally is Prestwick Carr, it is an archetypal example of what not to do with a peatland, a microcosm of the entire peatland history on one site. Drained in the 1860’s for agriculture it is now a low lying area of very poor land to the north of Newcastle. Little populated, it is an area of poor quality horsey paddocks, rough pasture and prone to flashing's, standing water, as result of its continued drainage. Amongst this devastated land is one of the rarest habitats in the world, a lowland raised mire and yet we planted trees on it and continue to drain the peatland that surrounds it so devaluing its value not just as a wildlife resource but as a carbon sink. It is losing up to 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide per ha per year because of the drying peat soils.



Frozen standing water perched on a crust of impermeable hard drained peat.

 There is sufficient evidence available now to show that it is possible to halt these losses through habitat restoration and that this will have greenhouse gas benefits. On a local scale there is also evidence that it will reduce the flashy nature of the flood episodes on the area as the ground will absorb precipitation more easily when rewetted. This also will have benefits on water quality issues, water colour and flooding elsewhere.

Peatland restoration is also a cost effective means of addressing climate change, compared with other carbon abatement methods such as afforestation and renewable energy. Restoring peatlands can be considered a natural form of carbon capture and storage, preventing release of carbon from damaged bogs and preserving it for potentially millions of years.

His words ring eerily and simply true of what we need to do to achieve some carbon banking, O let them be left, wildness and wet!