For Peat’s Sake!
Posted on Feb 07, 2023 by jsw
By Lizzie Bannister
Gordon's Mere, Woodwalton Fen NNR - geograph.org.uk - 163958.jpg" by Terry McKenna is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
After many years of campaigning – including by CPRE - the government has banned the sale of peat-based compost for private gardens and allotments. But that isn’t the whole story!
I have done a little research and it turns out that the issue we are focusing on goes further than getting garden centres and gardeners to sell and use less peat. My story of discovery follows:
There is an ongoing project to get the Fens designated a Biosphere by UNESCO. Such a designation would recognise the potential links between people and their environment that puts nature and economic viability together, leading to increased sustainability, reduced cost, and more resilience to ecological change and climate crisis. This would lead to the issue of the loss of peat being addressed and the vital importance of peatlands for our climate and biodiversity being recognised.
"NCA 46 The Fens - Holme Fen NNR" by naturalengland is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Fens Biosphere project is being managed by the same group trialling wet farming in the Fens (called the Water Works Project) - that is the Wildlife Trust BCN, Cambridgeshire ACRE, University of East Anglia and the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology.
It is funded by the Postcode Lottery and is looking at changing farming practices and growing different crops to suit the future climate, support a future economy and help protect soils and biodiversity, including Fen peatlands.
There’s more: there are peatland restoration projects across the UK being supported by Natural England. The importance of peatlands to climate change is recognised: they have a critical role in storing carbon and in the UK it’s estimated that there are over 3 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the peatlands – equivalent to all carbon stored in the forests of the UK, Germany and France put together! Peat covers 3% of the land surface and is an important habitat with unique wildlife. It also provides ecosystem services, for example, slowing down floodwater. But 80% of UK peatlands are estimated to be in a damaged and deteriorating condition. Its loss due to tillage, extraction (including gravel extraction), drying out as the soil on top is lost, and also to the effects of climate change and land use change (water extraction, agricultural practice) is frightening.
The IUCN international peatland programme recognises the UK's efforts to manage, restore and stop destroying peatland. There is already an established commitment to use better management practices, and this includes better farming practices on our Fens farmland. There is hopefully an English Peatland Strategy in the pipeline too.
A quarter of the remaining peat (under soil mostly) is in nature reserves and floodplains that are untouched. This is one quarter of 10,500ha - down from 24,000ha in 1987, the loss running at 2cm per year. Indeed, one must remember the Holme Fen Post that shows starkly the loss of peat, mainly due to the drainage of the landscape!
As well as projects like Water Works there have been other solutions proposed, such as more sensitive tillage by farmers and, of course, expanding nature reserves e.g. through the Wicken Fen Vision project. Natural England’s peatland strategy includes reducing destructive practices like burning and cutting, and improving the condition of peatlands.
To find more about CPRE’s view on peat, Fens for the Future, Wet Farming and the Fens Biosphere see the websites below.
Update: since this blog was first written, The National Lottery Heritage Fund has confirmed its award of £8m for the Great Fen's Peatland Progress project -Peatland Progress: A New Vision for the Fens). This project aims to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss by uniting the north and south ‘halves’ of the Great Fen. The land will be transformed into a mix of reedbed, open water, wet and dry grassland, providing additional habitat for the threatened wildlife and the partnership project will develop a model of agricultural production to inspire and change farming practice on peat soils across the UK.
https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/12/peat-pilots-set-to-revive-english-peatlands/
https://www.fensforthefuture.org.uk/the-fens/land
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