For hundreds of years, areas that are wet and boggy have had drainage ditches cut in them, created to channel water from the landscape. These lower the local water table and dry out both access routes and the peat itself, ready for extraction, grazing or growing. This has taken place across the world’s peatlands, including the UK’s South West, where an industrial revolution and post-war push incentivised increasing land productivity and food production.

However, draining peatlands increases the oxygen levels in the peat, meaning the organic material preserved begins to decompose more rapidly, leading to CO2 emissions and rapid run-off. Draining has also led to plants that thrive in dry conditions to take over vast swathes of peatlands, such as molinia (the pale grass you can spot across much of these areas.) In turn this creates drier conditions and these plants force cracks in the peat with their roots. Without intervention, a cycle of run off, drying out and degradation continues.

Whether from wildfires or fires to clear areas of vegetation for livestock or recreation, fires damage the vital carbon store and unique habitats of peatlands. Fire affects the surface of blanket bog and over time the exposed peat dries and erodes, creating cracks, fissures and gullies in the process. The water table within the peatland surrounding these features drops, increasing the susceptibility of the peat to erosion from run off and weather like snow, ice, wind and sun. With less water being stored by the blanket bog when it rains, greater amounts of water can end up running through and eroding the valley mire, or leading to flash flooding downstream.

Blocking drainage ditches and erosion gullies and working towards restoring peatland raises the water table and increases the variety of plants on the area. This increased wetness helps to tackle the risk of wildfires across these valuable ecological spaces.

From the ‘Cornish Alps’ of white china clay waste to clifftop engine houses, remnants of a mining industry of years gone by will be a familiar site to locals and visitors to the South West alike. China clay mining remains can be seen on some areas of peatlands, such as at Red Lake and Leftlake near Ivybridge.

Less obvious perhaps are the remains of the prolific extraction of tin from across Dartmoor and Cornwall, including tin streaming, open cast mining and deep shaft mining underground. Whilst not found across the rest of the UK, evidence of this is widespread across the region, as underlying granite contains seams of cassiterite, a mineral that is smelted to produce tin. This often took place up on the peatlands and blanket bogs of Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor.

You can find out more about how we preserve these historic features during peatland restoration works at this link here.

For thousands of years, humans have extracted resources from peatlands to survive and earn a living.

Wetland habitats were an important resource for hunter-gatherers in the Mesolithic era, for food such as birds and fish, and plant resources such as sphagnum, reeds and bark.

Peat itself was a valuable fuel source for people living nearby and further afield. Cut from the landscape by hand or machinery, peat was used to heat homes or cook their food over, and also industrially to smelt tin ore or to be processed into a heating oil called naptha, and latterly for use in horticulture. Examples of cuttings created on peatlands include near Dartmoor Prison and at Ockerton Court North on NW Dartmoor.

This particular practice is now banned, however in some places in the UK and around the world, industrial extraction still occurs, particularly for producing compost that contains peat. You can make a difference by not buying products that contain peat. Here is a link to some tips from The Wildlife Trusts on how to go peat free at home.