Beautiful Bogs, Saving the Peatlands of the UK

British bogs store over three billion tonnes of carbon, that's as much as all the forests in the UK, Germany and France combined

In The Country

Home 9 In The Country 9 Beautiful Bogs, Saving the Peatlands of the UK

Peaty Goodness

You can’t call yourself a true hillwalker until you have gone up to your knees in a bog on the moors and fells of England or Scotland. Whether its a bottomless muddy pool on Dartmoor, the mahogany perfection of a grough on Kinder or the agoraphobic vastness of Rannoch moor. Wherever it is that you’ve succumbed to the mucky suction two things are the same, the panic of not knowing how deep it is, and the relief of your companions that it wasn’t them going in.

These vast and treacherous bogs are actually of huge importance to our climate. Peat is formed when vegetation rots down in acidic bogs, it’s a process that has taken thousands of years (up to 9,000 in some cases) to create the 3.7 million square kilometres of it on the planet, of which the UK has 13% (60% of that UK figure is in Scotland).

A Perfect Carbon Sink

This ‘blanket bog’ stores a phenomenal amount of carbon. Worldwide it covers 3% of the land, but stores nearly 550 Gigatonnes of carbon. That’s more than every other vegetation type put together, including forests. Now, being the short sighted berks that we are, peat has been dug up and burnt for fuel and used as mulch in gardens. Which releases all that stored carbon and strips the peatland at a frightening rate.

Miracle Moss in the Bog

Sphagnum moss is one of the primary components of blanket bogs, it’s an amazing little plant that can hold up to 20 times its weight in water, which is another feature of bogs, they hold water so during storms thay can slow the discharge of flood water by up to 30%. Sphagnum also helps to create the acidic conditions by producing chemicals, this slows decomposition and makes the perfect environment for peat formation.

There are many kinds of the moss, some that grow submerged and others on the surface. Being highly absorbent, and also posessing mild antiseptic qualities, the moss has been used as a wound dressing, on a large scale in the World Wars. yet as peat only forms at an average rate of 1mm per year all this moss depletion and large scale stripping for fuel and horticulture has resulted in another shrinking natural resource.

The peat bogs provide a rich habitat for wildlife, prevent erosion and flooding, improve water quality and prevent wildfires. Plus they are at the heart of some of the most beautiful areas that we enjoy outdoor activities in.

Saving the Peat Bogs

Halting the depletion of peatlands is essential if we want to tackle climate change, restoring the damage we have caused is an imperative. In England Moors For The future is an organistaion doing just that for the Peak District and South Pennines, and they say ‘blanket bogs in the Peak District and South Pennines have experienced long term decline, due to a range of human induced factors. This has a knock-on effect on the habitat and its ability to provide multiple benefits to society’.

They are worth getting involved with and keeping an eye on, one really interesting thing are their series of mp3 audio self guided walks in the Peaks and South Pennines.

Definitely don’t use peat based compost in your garden!