New team to monitor upland and lowland peatlands in Northumberland

Over the past five decades, Northumberland Wildlife Trust has been working tirelessly to protect the region’s peatlands via The Border Mires peatland restoration project - the earliest and longest running project of its kind in the country.

Now, the wildlife charity, as host to the Northumberland Peat Partnership (NPP), is able to continue its efforts to protect the county’s peat with a new dedicated peat team.

A grant of £81,000 per year until 2026 from Esmée Fairburn Foundation (as part of a Great North Bog Coalition Award) and one-off Nature for Climate and Peat Discovery Grant of £370,000 (from Natural England) will facilitate the assessment and monitoring of 5,000 ha (hectares) of upland and lowland peatlands during the first year.

The team of eight people is working across 10 sites in the county during year-one; helping land-managers and farmers fund, map, survey, plan and coordinate the restoration of degraded peatlands.

They will also be helping to implement continuous hydrological monitoring to ensure remedial works such as bare peat restoration and drain blocking are effective and result in the rewetting of the degraded habitat, so peat-forming bog species can again thrive.

In addition, the team will survey peatlands using satellite data and drones, conduct botanical surveys, identify gullies, drainage ‘grips’, bare peat areas and hags (areas of exposed peat) and measure the depth of the peat bog. Data collected from the surveys will then form the basis for a restoration plan for each site.

Peatlands cover only 3% of the world’s land surface, but hold 25% of the global soil carbon making them the world’s most effective terrestrial carbon stores.

The benefits of healthy peatland function not only extends to climate mitigation (through carbon storage) and increasing biodiversity, but also improves water quality, aids flood mitigation (by slowing water flow), prevents soil erosion, reduces wildfire risks and acts as a unique archive of our British cultural past.

Heinz Traut, Northumberland Peat Partnership programme manager said: “We find ourselves in exciting times, as healthy peatland ecosystem services are being recognised more and hence government policy and funding are following suit, though is still evolving.”

The NPP area (starting north of the A69) has an estimated 142,000 ha of peatlands (10% of the UK’s peatlands), and of this, 33,000 ha (23%) is recorded as deep peat, which store the most carbon.

Restoration of an estimated 80% of the peatlands is needed, as it has been damaged due to historical land management practices, such as artificially drainage, erosion, overgrazing, burning and encroachment of trees.