This summer the monitoring team have been out near-daily looking at all aspects of peatland health, wildlife and plant diversity, and collecting data to inform future restoration approaches. We had a chat with Ellie Peters, SWPP Monitoring Officer, on her reflections, highlights and challenges from the 2026 summer monitoring season.
What have you been up to this summer?
The main focus of our summer field season is always vegetation surveys, looking at the different plant species that grow in an area and using them as indicators to tell us about the condition of the habitat. This year we surveyed five sites across Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin Moor. Some of those sites contained multiple transects – fixed lines that cross a restored erosion or drainage feature that we survey using quadrats at regular intervals.
All of the vegetation surveys this year were on established monitoring sites with pre-restoration data available. One particularly interesting example is Blackpitts on Exmoor, a site that had some restoration work in 2007, and where the first vegetation survey was carried out in 2006. We're currently analysing the data, so it'll be really interesting to see how the site has changed over the last two decades.
We also revisited the Tavy Head site to assess vegetation change one year after the Dartmoor May 2025 fire that burned, which should provide some interesting results. We plan to monitor this site long term to see how restoration may impact on vegetation resilience and recovery.
Alongside vegetation monitoring, we've also carried out dragonfly surveys, acoustic bird monitoring, eDNA sampling and aquatic invertebrate surveys, doing more to understand the change that restoration can bring to the landscape.
What have the dragonfly surveys shown?
We surveyed five sites for dragonflies and damselfies this summer, including Ockerton Court, Tor Royal, Tor Royal Palmer on Dartmoor, and Alderman's Barrow Allotment and Chetsford Water on Exmoor.
Across all our survey sites, dragonfly numbers have shown an increase which has been amazing to see. At Ockerton Court, populations have risen year-on-year since restoration. The Black Darter, an IUCN Red List species that is a boggy pool specialist, have increased around tenfold, while common hawkers and emerald damselflies (also upland specialist species) have also shown substantial increases. This positive change has been so heartwarming to witness, as for many of these species, the reason for their decline is primarily habitat loss due to the absence of pools water on degraded peatlands. Seeing the rate at which these species come in as well as the sheer bio abundance is amazing.
//graph of Ockerton & Steve’s images
Dragonflies are a really key species for tracking and understanding peatland health. These are encouraging signs that restored peatlands are providing improved habitat for important upland species and crucially holding that water back for longer.
Tell us about some of the new monitoring techniques being trialled
This summer we've been collecting baseline acoustic monitoring and eDNA data at a commercial conifer plantation planted on peat on Bodmin Moor, and at a valley mire site before works begin on mid-Dartmoor.
At the moment these surveys are providing baseline pre-restoration information, so we're not looking for changes just yet. The exciting thing has been trialling entirely new approaches to monitoring biodiversity.
The acoustic monitoring devices record continuously, collecting data of bird song for 24 hours a day over a period of several weeks. This helps overcome some of the limitations of traditional surveys, where results can be affected by weather or the timing of a single visit.
They're particularly useful for detecting elusive or nocturnal bird species that might otherwise be missed. That said, acoustic monitoring won't replace expert surveyors. The technology works best alongside traditional field surveys like our Dartmoor 2024 RSPB Bird Survey, with each method offering different strengths.
One challenge is verifying results. Automated systems can sometimes misidentify species, so records still need to be checked against existing data and expert knowledge. We did have a suspicious record of an Atlantic Puffin! We removed that one…
Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling similarly also allows for detecting more elusive species. It works by picking up the DNA that animals shed as they move through the environment, i.e. skin, mucus, faeces. It involves some interesting techniques (as demonstrated by the video below of us using a lint-roller to pick up traces of DNA from passing animals). It was really fun to trial something entirely new. With the e-DNA sampling, the results were lower than expected, but there were several potential reasons for this. The sampling took place within a conifer plantation, which is naturally a relatively low-diversity habitat. It's also possible that the highly acidic conditions associated with peat beneath conifer plantations caused eDNA to degrade more quickly than anticipated.
At this stage, it's difficult to determine exactly why the results were lower than expected. We'll repeat both the acoustic and eDNA monitoring after restoration to help us to further understand the ecological impact of the restoration.
Video showing a lint roller being used to collect samples for eDNA monitoring
How did the hot, dry summer affect survey work?
Fortunately, most of our vegetation surveys took place before the most severe heat and dry weather conditions developed, so we didn't experience major issues identifying vegetation. The sphagnum mosses and other key species were still in good condition to identify when we carried out the surveys.
The experience has highlighted the benefits of conducting surveys earlier in the season and perhaps with the recent patterns of more extreme heat in the summer seasons, we will continue to build this flexibility into our plans for following years.
But we didn’t escape it entirely: the heat did create practical challenges. Some surveys had to be moved, delayed or cancelled altogether because conditions became too hot for safe and effective fieldwork. Peatlands are typically highly exposed, with no shade, therefore we have to consider the risks of exposure for ourselves and our volunteers.
Dragonfly surveys also had to be adjusted. In previous summer seasons surveys have had to be postponed due to being too cold and not hitting the lowest temperature threshold (approx. 16C) for dragonflies to be active. This year was a total contrast - on some of the hottest days we had to start much earlier than usual because dragonflies can become harder to survey in extreme temperatures, flying more erratically or feeding and returning back to the grasses to rest in the very hot weather.
The drought has also impacted some of our river aquatic monitoring where we are using river invertebrates as indicators of water and habitat quality in response to restoration. These surveys require both an early and late summer survey each year, the drought meant that when we returned to carry out the late summer surveys, some streams had dried up completely or had too little water to sample within. We still carried out some sampling where we could despite the exceptional conditions as there is an opportunity to see how wildlife responds to these extreme conditions. Encouragingly, we found several golden-ringed dragonfly nymphs, suggesting that some species are successfully holding on despite the difficult conditions. But for the mean time, we have had to delay the standard surveys until there is substantial rainfall.
We'll head back out on site this October and continue monitoring these sites over the coming weeks, depending on rainfall and water levels.
What are you hoping to learn from water-level monitoring after the drought?
We use dataloggers and dipwells to record data on the water table within the peat every 15 minutes, all year round. As we head into autumn our ecological surveys are wrapping up, which means we're beginning to do the rounds of our dipwells to download and analyse data captured across the summer. It will take some time to analyse, but we’re particularly interested in understanding how peatland water tables have responded to this year's drought.
Functioning peatlands are defined by their high and stable water tables, therefore, restoration works help to improve their resilience against future more regular more extreme weather events such as drought. In light of this, the comparison of data collected between restored and unrestored sites should be especially informative. We're keen to see whether restored sites experienced less water-table drawdown, and therefore had greater resilience and stability during dry conditions.
For sites with long-term data collection, we may be able to compare the data collected from this summers drought against the 2022 drought. If so, we'll have an opportunity to examine whether restoration sites have become more resilient over time as they've had additional years to mature and settle.
What was the highlight of your summer?
Without doubt, visiting Tor Royal. This site had restoration works in spring 2025 and it’s a special place to work now.
The site was absolutely alive with wildlife. There were huge numbers of dragonflies, swallows, house martins and displaying and drumming snipe. A hobby swooped in too, likely been attracted by the abundance of dragonflies and other prey to eat.
What made the experience particularly striking was that it happened during the height of the drought. While many of the surrounding areas were looking dry, crispy and stressed, Tor Royal remained lush and wet, with the restoration pools still holding water: a real oasis.
It felt like all the wildlife in the surrounding landscape had concentrated into this one green space, no doubt because of the availability of water. We recorded 11 dragonfly species during the survey and also discovered two small red damselflies. This was particularly exciting as this is a nationally scarce species that had not previously been recorded at the site. We'll continue monitoring to see whether a small red population becomes established there in the future.
If that happens, it would be exciting evidence that peatland restoration is helping create new habitat for a declining species year after year.
How important are volunteers to the monitoring programme?
Volunteers are absolutely invaluable. Even with support from contractors, the amount of monitoring the team could undertake alone would be far more limited without the team of volunteers we have. Volunteers enable us to survey significantly more sites than would otherwise be possible, this summer season contributing over 224 hours of their time.
Many volunteers also bring substantial expertise and local knowledge. As well as contributing to surveys, they often share fascinating insights about local wildlife, history and landscape management.
This year volunteers have supported vegetation surveys, dragonfly surveys and the Eyes on the Bog programme (checking in on rods within the peat to assess whether there has been shrinkage or growth of peat). Their reports and observations have also helped us understand how peatland pools and habitats responded during the drought across all the areas we work on. Having extra eyes on the ground across such a large area is incredibly valuable.
If you’d like to get involved with our volunteer programme, whether that’s vegetation surveys, eyes on the bog monitoring, or our regular work parties, find out more at this link here and get in touch if you have any questions {link]