Yorkshire Peat Partnership

The importance of peat as a store of carbon has now been recognised and restoration and conservation work is being undertaken throughout the UK.

The Yorkshire Peat Partnership is funded and led by staff from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Natural England, National Trust, Environment Agency and North York Moors National Park Authority. It has been formed to work with moorland owners to help restore and then conserve the unique and valuable upland peatland habitats across large swathes of Yorkshire.

Over the next three to five years, funds from the Government’s Higher Level Environmental Stewardship Scheme will be used to restore around 34,000 hectares of peatland in the Yorkshire Dales, Nidderdale, South Pennines and North York Moors.

Restoration work will include:

• blocking over 3,000km of the estimated 5,000km of drainage ditches (known as ‘grips’) using a combination of machine-built peat dams and hand-built timber dams

• restoring nearly 1,500km of eroding gullies using machines to re-profile their sides and hand-built timber dams to trap eroding peat

• returning vegetation cover to nearly 190ha of bare peat using moss-rich cut heather brash

By April 2011, the Partnership will have already worked with landowners to block 225km of grips, restore 39km of eroding gullies, and begun the process of re-establishing vegetation on 17ha of peatland.

Further information on the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and the work it is doing can be found at www.yppartnership.org.uk

Links

• IUCN Peatland Programme

• Nature in the Dales