By John Knox
If you see a group of worried-looking men and women dressed in cagoules and gumboots walking out on to Flanders Moss west of Stirling this week, they are not the remains of a political party intent on committing mass suicide, they are scientists trying to save Scotland’s peat bogs.
The scientists have been attending a three-day conference at Stirling University called by the UK Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands. The commission has found that a third of the UK landmass still has peaty soil of one sort or another, but that most of our proper peat bogs and fens have been lost, due to extensive draining for agriculture, forestry, industry, roads and housing.
Does this matter? Yes, because peatlands absorb huge amounts of the gas we are all trying to get rid of, carbon dioxide. The conference was told that the loss of only 5 per cent of the carbon stored in UK peatlands would be equal to our total greenhouse gas emissions for a year. And if you thought that planting trees was the best way of absorbing carbon dioxide, then you should know that Britain’s peatlands can store up to 3 billion tonnes of carbon, 20 times what is stored in all the forests put together.
Scotland is especially blessed with peat bogs. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reckons we have 1.9 million hectares of high-quality peat bog “which could potentially deliver around a million tonnes of carbon sequestration per annum”. And, as a wildlife organisation, the RSPB is also interested in the biodiversity which well-managed bogs can conserve.
Scientists become dewy-eyed when describing places such as Flanders Moss. Here is the Scottish Natural Heritage description of the place: “Squelchy mats of sphagnum moss carpet the reserve with their swirling colours, whilst adders and lizards bask in the sunshine. Listen for the distinctive calls of snipe and stonechat or feel the slight shudder of the peat as it quakes beneath your feet.”
How could farmers and crofters drain such beautiful places and cut into them for fuel just to stoke their peat fires? On Flanders Moss, the cutting began in the 1700s and continued, on an industrial scale, until the 1980s. Now, however, the drainage ditches are being filled in and gradually the bog is returning to its old squelchy self.
In England, the loss of fenland has been dramatic. Fens, incidently, are bogs filled with ground water, as opposed to rain water. A survey in 1637 recorded what we would now call 34,000 square kilometres of fenland. Only 10 sq km remain today. Not before time, SNH and others have recently published a Fen Management Handbook, which basically suggests we stop draining our peatlands and polluting them and covering them with trees, windfarms, roads, houses, industrial estates and golf courses.
The RSPB estimates that to reach the Scottish government’s target of 600,000 hectares of peatland restored by 2015 would cost around £60m. But with the floor price of carbon now at £16 a tonne and due to rise to £30 by 2020, we would get more than half our money back in notional climate change costs – and the price of carbon can only get higher in the longer term as the planet struggles for breath.
Peatlands such as the Flow Country in Caithness, and fens such as the Insh Marches in Strathspey, are the lungs of our environmental system and we should be using them to keep our air and water fresh and our climate stable.
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