In a nutshell...
Funding: £100,000 per intervention (part of a larger project, ~£40m in total)*.
Length: Ongoing
Location: North Pennines National Landscape (with the potential to extend to Nidderdale National Landscape and Cornwall National Landscape).
Aim: To restore all of our peatlands to fully functional wetland ecosystems for the many benefits this brings to people, nature and climate.
Opportunities: Corporate visit days.
*subject to additional management fees.
The problem
It's estimated that damaged peatland accounts for 5% of all global emissions, making them a critical environmental and economic asset.
Despite covering just 3% of the Earth's land surface, peatlands store an estimated 30% of the world's soil carbon, and twice the carbon stored in all the world’s forests making them a crucial component in the fight against climate change.
Here in the UK, peatland covers about 12% of our land and the vast majority of it is damaged and degraded.
After years of drainage, cutting, overgrazing and burning, our peatlands are emitting over 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases (CO2e) into the atmosphere every year.
Degraded peatlands also lose their ability to retain water, increasing flood risk and reducing water quality. Biodiversity suffers, as habitat destruction impacts rare species dependent on these ecosystems.
Our peatlands have immense ecological, cultural, and economic significance in the UK, making their conservation and restoration crucial.
These unique landscapes play a pivotal role in supporting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and providing various other ecosystem services such as flood amelioration, drinking water supply, recreational and economic opportunities.
Restoration works happening across peatland in the North Pennines. Interventions include stone dams, coir rolls, and spreading seed-rich heather brash.
Our work so far
The North Pennines National Landscape team has been restoring peatlands since 2005.
We have led the work to bring almost 50,000ha of peatland under restoration – an area over 4 x the size of Newcastle.
We raise the funds, negotiate permission to undertake the work, devise the restoration works and manage the contracts to deliver work on the ground. We are also heavily involved in monitoring and supporting new peatland science.
The North Pennines National Landscape team has already secured upwards of £2m in private finance to support our peatland restoration work, but this is a fraction of what is required to restore all of our peatlands.
Coir wooden dam helping to rewet the peatland and hold more water in the landscape. More eco-friendly materials are always being tested and used in the restoration works.
The opportunity
Working with our partners in the Great North Bog (GNB) coalition, which also covers Nidderdale and the Forest of Bowland National Landscapes, we are collaborating to:
- Increase the pace and scale of restoration.
- Raise awareness of the importance of peatlands and the benefits they provide.
- Increase skills and capacity for staff and contractors.
- Improve the evidence base for peatland restoration and conservation.
- Raise the necessary resources and further diversify income streams.
We have been working to test and develop peatland restoration-based carbon credits and the emerging peatland carbon credit market, as the upscaling of this market is still not, for a variety of reasons, functioning as it needs to be.
One of the current challenges with working at the interface between economy and ecology is the need to develop trusted an ethically-matched corporate partners who want to buy the carbon, developing that offer equitably with the landowner and associated stakeholders, whilst at the same time ensuring a gold standard delivery for the peatland restoration work.
In addressing these challenges, and developing the carbon market within the GNB area, there is also a need to avoid a ‘race to the bottom’ that could be a possible consequence of monetising nature benefits (i.e., cheapest price for carbon credits and lowering restoration quality to increase profits).
A breakthrough in 2024 was our first brokering of the sale of carbon for peatland through the IUCN UK Peatland Code, which we have been working with for several years.
We are now seeking further business funding to increase the pace and scale and peatland restoration for all the benefits this brings to people, nature and climate.
Through our collaboration with Nidderdale and the Forest of Bowland National Landscape teams and others in our Great North Bog coalition, we can expand the scale of financial partners.
Peatland restoration works in the North Pennines from the sky.
The project
Our focus is the practical restoration of peatlands in the North Pennines and across the wider uplands.
Funders are associated with specific locations and opportunities so that you can visit your patch and see its change over time.
The restoration work itself includes:
- Restoring bare/eroding peat (through understanding the way water moves across our peatlands and making interventions to slow and modify the flow to enable vegetation to recolonise).
- Spreading vast quantities of seed-rich heather brash, and planting hundreds of thousands of sphagnum plants.
- Grip-blocking (fixing the decades of drains cut across our uplands to facilitate grazing).
We work with farmers and land managers, other conservation partners and businesses.
Yours could be next.