Peat land in the South Pennines holds the key to tackling climate change

Cotton grass seeds, which are collected, propogated and replanted as part of the restoration project taking place on sections of the moorland

Peat land in the South Pennines holds the key to tackling climate change.

Through the Precious Peat workshops children have discovered the wonders of peat and its global significance as a carbon store and diverse habitat. The peat land in Britain stores more carbon than all the forests and woodlands in Britain and France combined.

Groundwork Pennine Lancashire, thanks to funding through the Watershed Landscape project, managed by rural regeneration company Pennine Prospects, has already taken workshops into primary schools in Colne, Shawforth, Whitworth, Trawden and Bacup, with more planned for next year.

Members of the Groundwork team have also taken dozens of young people onto the moors above Burnley to plant cotton grass and conducted several free guided walks in the uplands landscape with two more planned in the coming weeks.

Alan Green, senior project officer for Groundwork Pennine Lancashire, hopes that by alerting the younger generation to the global importance of peat its future protection can be secured.

“In the Precious Peat workshops we introduce the children to the idea that peat land is a diverse ecosystem as precious as the rainforests and it’s just here on their doorstep,” Alan explained. “We need to take steps to protect what we have left as 90 per cent of our peat land has already been degraded through pollution, erosion and overuse. It’s quite shocking to see the erosion on the moors. However there’s a lot of restoration work being done.”

As part of this work the Offshoots Permaculture Project, managed by Groundwork Pennine Lancashire, has been collecting cotton grass seeds from the moorland, propagating them at the project’s centre at Towneley Hall, Burnley, before replanting them back on the moorland to encourage re-growth. The replanting is being carried out by groups of young volunteers and is just part of a wider initiative to restore the upland catchment; reducing the areas of eroded bare peat which will ensure not only water quality is protected but also improve the habitat for internationally rare ground nesting birds, such as the twite.

Phill Dewhurst, Offshoots manager, explained that cotton grass is just one species they are trying to encourage: “Our nursery is now expanding to include other native moorland plants, such as crowberry and bilberry. These species are more complicated to propagate and we face an exciting challenge in developing expertise in those propagation techniques.”

Since 2009 the Watershed Landscape project has restored fields, dry-stone walls and footpaths, worked with volunteers and brought the story of the South Pennines to hundreds of people. The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the South Pennines LEADER programme, (the Rural Development Programme for England), which is jointly funded by Defra and the European Union, and managed by Pennine Prospects.