Peak District Peat Bogs on the road to recovery

The word ‘bog’ doesn’t necessarily conjure up a positive image; in fact, it is downright negative. And yet the peatlands of the Peak are proving vital for our battle against changing climate and in holding back floodwaters through ‘slowing the flow’ when rivers are swollen after storm events. At the head of each main river catchment, the peat-bogs hold back vast quantities of water which are then released over time and alleviate potential droughts downstream. The bog moss alone holds about twenty times its own weight in water. What is more, the peatlands are wonderfully rich biodiversity sites too with unique species of plants, animals, and fungi. However, there is bad news because for over two hundred years people have drained and burned the peatlands, and our atmospheric pollution has killed off the vital sphagnum mosses which when healthy hold the water, provide habitat for rare species, and remarkably too, capture carbon that is laid down as peat. Two centuries of over-grazing by sheep has also done for the peat bogs and this reached its nadir in the late twentieth century. All in all, this is bad news, and a major cause of a collapse of what we now call ‘ecosystem services’ like floodwater control and carbon capture.

But there is good news today because with reduced sheep numbers, lowered air pollution, and some tender loving care, our bogs are bouncing back to life. Some of this is due to major investment in projects to block drains, alleviate soil acidity, and even to re-seed sphagnum mosses back into the degraded peat landscapes. However, for me even more exciting, is the ability of nature to heal itself. My colleagues and I have been monitoring sphagnum mosses and rare flowers on Ringinglow Bog near Sheffield. It is doing what I call ‘self-rewilding’ as the peat-building bog mosses are returning with ten or more species now recorded in what was described as a ‘sphagnum desert’ back in the 1980s. This is in an area where there has been no artificial introduction of sphagnum, but nature has been left to repair itself.

Furthermore, the flowering plants of moorland and peat bog are also returning. The bog mosses are now joined by the elusive bog rosemary or ‘Andromeda’ which has returned in abundance. Last recorded in the 1960s and 1970s before the North Sea Gas pipeline cut a deep trench though both moor and bog, this plant has made a remarkable and unexpected recovery. Sundew is reappearing in its old haunts, along with one of my favourites, the diminutive upland lily, bog asphodel, and the archetypical flowers of wet bogs, the cranberry, and the cross-leaved heath. Not far away, the once extinct royal fern has reappeared and joins several other upland wet bog ferns such as hard fern, lemon-scented fern, and narrow buckler-fern.

As the bogs recover then so do associated wildlife species such as the upland dragonflies, goldenringed and black darter, and of course that often unnoticed denizen of upland bogs, the water vole. Golden plover, dunlin, and curlew are birds that also depend on these wetlands for their survival. Each visit holds the hope of the re-discovery of a precious species once thought lost forever.