Cymraeg

Last week we went to Cardiff for the Biodiversity Day sponsored by Carolyn Thomas MS. We’ve been talking all about peatland species, from our bog building Sphagnum mosses to the beautiful carnivorous sundew. We’re particularly happy to have gotten the chance to speak with Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies about possible vehicles for legislation to end the sale of peat in Wales.

The state of Welsh peatlands

The current situation in Wales is similar to the situation in England, with a ban on the sale of horticultural peat announced in 2022. This came a little later than the announcement from the UK government. Friends of the Earth suggested in a blog post at the time that there was some confusion in the Senedd about whether Wales could legislate on its own. Indeed, devolution has presented challenging questions around peat legislation.

So where are we now? Last year, celebrity ambassadors for the Wildlife Trusts, including Cel Spellman, Alison Steadman and TWT vice president Iolo Williams, publicly called on the Welsh government to act on its promise of legislation. At the Peat-free Partnership, we’ve been working with our Welsh partners to lobby for legislation directly. But the 2022 commitments to end the sale and supply of peat by 2024 have passed with no legislation coming into effect that would deliver.

The pressure to legislate is here

With the next Senedd election scheduled for 7^th May 2026, there’s pressure to act fast, before everything is put on hold. The addition of 36 new members has introduced further changes to the electoral process and additional focus on the Welsh election season. Ideally, getting legislation through before election season would provide the greatest benefits for peatlands. Each day without it directly correlates to peat taken from bogs and put in bags, while degraded peatlands produce roughly 23,100 kt CO2e / year of greenhouse gas.

Peat bog near Quarter Bach. Photo: Alan Hughes CC BY-SA 2.0

There’s appetite for change. Peat extraction doesn’t actually happen in Wales, and there are a number of restoration programmes intended to restore Welsh peatlands: the National Peatland Action Programme (NPAP), which is currently entering its fifth year, or CARE-PEAT, a collaboration with Europe that ran from 2019-2023. In 2024 it was announced that government-funded peatland restoration had reached targets a year earlier than scheduled. But as we discussed in the Northern Irish context last month, extraction undermines conservation efforts through its devastating impact.

These restoration efforts are driven by a policy interest in nature-based solutions. The Biodiversity Deep Dive commissioned in 2022 led to scaling up of the NPAP with intentions to produce 45,000 ha of restored peatlands by 2045. Through peat legislation, we hope to see the policy interest increase, alongside the environmental organisations across the UK who are calling for a political re-focusing on nature protection.

We need your help to deliver

In this crucial period of time, we need Welsh politicians to speak up for peatlands and keep the pressure on to end peat sales.

We urge you to write to your MP today and ask them to support the bill to end peat sales. The bill is scheduled for its second reading in the House of Commons on 4^th July, and it’s an important moment to show that protecting our peatlands is a top-priority issue. If you wish, you can also contact your regional MSs, and ask them to champion peatlands in the Senedd as well.

Send your letter here using our customisable pre-written template!