Borrowdale wetland restoration

This will be the third time we have been to help restore this peat bog and it will be great to see how our previous work is bedding in! Natural peat bogs are a wonderful carbon store and old dry bogs are being restored and 're-wetted' all over the country. On this event you will be shown the amazing work that has already been done (including by ODL!) on a bog between Watendlath and Thirlmere in the Lake District; and you will help continue the work building 'leaky dams' to help create ponds rich in insect, bird and plant life. We will be with the project manager who will tell us all about this and other fascinating projects - it promises to be a really interesting and worthwhile day.

If you would like to make a weekend of it we will be camping in Borrowdale which you can book here.

You can watch a short film about bog restoration here https://youtu.be/IwdeIRfNziw

And learn more here 

And some more background:  At least 70 per cent of English peatlands are damaged by drainage, heavy grazing, regular burning, cultivation, forestry or other management. Scotland and Wales appear similar.

Once the peatland is damaged it is no longer waterlogged and the specialist plant species that make the peatland, such as Sphagnum mosses, cannot survive.

Once these plant species are lost bare peat areas can form and the surface dries, crumbles and cracks; rapidly eroding during severe weather.

Restoring peatlands aims to reverse this damage by covering bare peat areas with vegetation, blocking drains to raise the water table and return the waterlogged conditions and re-introducing Sphagnum mosses into areas they have been lost.

Photos Leader's own and used with permission.

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