Southwest Peatland Partnership
The South West Peatland Partnership is working together to restore degraded peatland across West Penwith, Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor and Exmoor by 2025. Restoring this damaged peatland through rewetting will have innumerable benefits. As well as acting as natural carbon stores, rare wildlife habitats, archaeological havens, water purifiers and places for people to enjoy, healthy peatlands also increase resilience to climate change.
The South West Peatland Partnerships vision is of restored peatlands across Cornwall, Dartmoor and Exmoor that support wildlife, store carbon, manage flooding, improve water security, enhance the historic environment, and champion livelihoods. The South West Peatland Partnership is a collaboration between local and regional government agencies, non-governmental organisations, businesses, landowners, commoners and farmers, working together across the UK’s South West to reduce further degradation to peatlands by raising the water table and restoring the hydrological function of these areas.
Partnering for Nature
The South West Peatland Partnership (SWPP) is a £13 million project delivering peatland restoration in the South West of England. In 2021, the SWPP received £9 million of funding from Natural England’s Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme (NCPGS) for the work for a 4-year project. This funding supports the government’s climate and environment commitments and their focus on restoring extensive areas of the UK’s damaged peatlands.
The Southwest Peatland Partnership works with a broad range of organisations, individuals, organisations charities and businesses as well as landowners and contractors to make a difference to the future of peatlands in the Southwest.
The work is made possible by support from a wide range of financial support through match funding, hosting SWPP staff and collaboration of partners ensures the future of restoration of peatland areas across Cornwall, Dartmoor and Exmoor.
Restoring for the Future
Restoring peatlands is no mean feat: its challenging but its vital, and urgent. It is a huge task and requires the involvement, determination and drive of a wide range of people, businesses and community groups. It’s why The SWPP works as a partnership, bringing together knowledge, experience and skills from across the UK’s South West, ensuring that everything from local land use to the historic environment, cultural elements and ecology are fully considered and incorporated within restoration plans.
Peatlands globally store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined, but when they dry out, they release carbon and other greenhouse gases. With at least 75% of the UK’s peatlands damaged and emitting emissions, the Southwest Peatland Partnership is part of several peatland partnerships working to restore these ecosystems, with the goal to keep carbon stored, support local communities, benefit wildlife, and champion the importance of peatlands.
The Vision
The partnership aims to restore damaged peatlands in the Southwest UK to increase climate resilience, retain carbon, and nurture bog-reliant wildlife and plants. This project aims to improve water quality, protect archaeological sites, and provide health and economic benefits to local communities. By monitoring progress and sharing findings, it will connect people with peatlands and highlight their ecological importance.
Exmoor
Peatland restoration in the UK’s South West finds its origins in the forward-thinking trials and early projects that took place on the mires and moors of Exmoor in the late 1990’s. In this area, a range of methods are aiming to reverse the landscape-scale drainage, burning and reclamation that took place in the 19th Century.
These peatland restoration works continue today, with a renewed determination through the creation of the Southwest Peatland Partnership to find the best ways to restore peatlands, benefit farming, champion wildlife and keep carbon in the ground.
Work on Exmoor is championed by the National Trust, Exmoor National Park Authority, the RSPB, local landowners and many more vital partners making a difference together.
Dartmoor
The tors and peatlands of Dartmoor are iconic, and the backdrop to many families enjoying days out to see the ponies and picnic spots.
It’s also a vital area for peatland restoration works to take place. Large amounts of water falls on Dartmoor, but large gullies, peat pipes and ditches channel this water rapidly away. This not only leaves the peat dry and eroded in many places, but also causes rapid runoff, reduces the quality of water in rivers and streams and leaves the land more susceptible to a future of climate change, drought and extreme rainfall.
With areas of peat up to 6 metres in depth, there’s a huge amount of good to be done on Dartmoor. The SWPP team works here with a wide range of partner organisations including the Duchy of Cornwall, Dartmoor National Park Authority, the Environment Agency and local commoners and farmers to find the best ways to store water on areas of peatland and bring about a range of benefits for the climate, wildlife, farming and people.
Special qualities
Peatlands are wetland landscapes shaped by waterlogged soils formed of dead and partially decaying plants: peat. A key component of peat, and therefore peatlands, are sphagnum mosses. These tightly-growing, water-retaining plants form blankets across the landscape, creating conditions that prevent the decay of plant material. Peatlands bring about innumerable benefits including;
For water Peat can hold up to 20 times its own weight in water, slowing the flow of water off landscapes & reducing flash flooding. Healthy peatland can also help to improve water quality, reducing the runoff of carbon into our rivers, streams & waterways.
For the climate Vast stores of carbon are found in the world’s peatlands due to the undecayed plants. Covering only 3% of the world’s land area, they store more than twice the carbon found in all the world’s forests.
For people Peatlands underpin huge amounts of our social, financial & recreational daily lives. Many rely on these areas in the UK’s South West for grazing their animals, with thousands more visiting these wide open spaces on days out.
For wildlife Visit a healthy, wet, peatbog on a sunny day & you’ll be surrounded by insects, birds, reptiles & more, all reliant on this unique environment. From dunlin to dragonflies, snipe to snakes, restoring areas of peat bogs will transform dry, degraded areas into spaces that benefit wildlife by creating food sources & nesting habitats for years to come.
For plants Insect-eating sundews, bobbing cotton grasses, mats of sphagnum moss; healthy peatlands are a haven for a range of plants reliant on these specialised environments.
For our history The peatlands of the UK’s South West are steeped in history. From the way people have shaped moorlands over the years through farming, mining & industry, to the records of our past contained in & on the peat itself.
As a collective we work closely with landowners, land managers, farmers and commoners who interact with peatlands daily to develop restoration proposals. Methods to raise the water table, focussed on areas that are drained and degraded, help to prevent further degradation and promotes active peat build up through Sphagnum moss recolonisation. Rewetting takes place by blocking the man-made and eroded drainage features, using a range of approaches and materials most suitable to the location, access, peat quality, historic features, farming and wildlife.
