Photo: Alison Murphy/Peat-free Partnership
By Sally Nex, Peat-free Partnership
The sun definitely shines in Scotland – we have proof! It was brilliantly sunny for our visit to the IUCN Peatlands Conference in the beautiful Cairngorm Mountains last week: in fact, I’m reliably informed it was several degrees warmer where we were than it was south of the border.
The conference has been running since 2010 (when awareness of the environmental damage caused by digging up peat bogs was clearly on the rise, as it was also when the year the UK government first asked the horticultural industry to move away from peat). It brings together government, scientists, land managers and peat restoration specialists from all over the UK and further afield to share their insights and experience.
Photo: Alison Murphy/Peat-free Partnership
We heard, among many others, from Scotland’s Minister for Agriculture, Jim Fairlie, who has responsibility for the Scottish government’s policy on peat. He told us protecting peatlands is “absolutely essential to meet Scotland and the UK’s net zero targets”. He promised a ‘just transition’ across greenhouse gas emitting sectors (including, we assume, horticulture in Scotland), and like us, sees the transition as a positive investment in green jobs and green skills.
The IUCN launched its Peatland Strategy Review, first published in 2018 and now at its five-year evaluation stage. It was a mixed picture: since the 1990s, 250,000 hectares of peatland have been restored, but 1.7 million hectares of degraded peatland still remain. The IUCN concludes that we are ‘not currently on the trajectory we need to be’ to ensure peatlands are fulfilling their role in helping tackle the climate and nature crisis.
Hand in hand with restoration is the need to protect our peat bogs from further damage: and on that, too, the IUCN painted a mixed picture. Earlier this year the Scottish government passed legislation to end muirburn – requiring special licences to carry out the previously unregulated and highly damaging practice of burning heather on peat bogs.
But, on the downside, progress towards ending sales of peat in horticulture in Scotland has stalled. It’s been a slow decline from the heady days of 2021, when the SNP’s manifesto promised to ban the sale of peat-related gardening products: three years later, their Programme for Government published earlier this month doesn’t even mention peat – a sad omission for a landscape so woven into Scotland’s sense of self.
Photo: Alison Murphy/Peat-free Partnership
Day two saw us heading up into the hills, magnificent views stretching out before us under a clear blue sky. We were on our way to visit the Gaick Estate, managed by Wildland Cairngorm: a remote valley tucked into the embrace of a ring of majestic mountains. Almost as soon as we arrived, one of the birders in our group pointed excitedly towards one of the towering summits where a pair of golden eagles soared together, riding the thermals higher and higher in a wild dance of freedom.
Lining the valley was an expanse of deep peatland, once burned and eroded away by ever-deepening gullies but now under restoration, a maze of wooden, stone and peat turf dams holding back the water so it stays in the peat instead of washing away downhill.
As we clambered over the hags and gullies, frogs eyed us beadily from pools and water boatmen skated across the surface of the standing water. The restoration was only a year old, yet sphagnum had already begun growing back: sodden fronds of Sphagnum cuspidatum, known among peatland enthusiasts as the ‘drowned kitten’ sphagnum for its bedraggled appearance; or brilliant red S. capillifolium like patches of rust among the cottongrass clumps.
Photo: Alison Murphy/Peat-free Partnership
It was a magical place. In time (much, much time: peat renews at the agonisingly slow rate of 1mm a year) the peat here will grow deep again, locking away tonnes of carbon and once again fulfilling its invaluable role absorbing floodwaters, filtering water and locking carbon away safely so it can’t contribute to climate change.
But all the while, not 150 miles away, all this careful work and public money (£250 million over a 10-year period in Scotland) is being undone at other peatland sites. From Auchencorth Moss south of Edinburgh to Ryeflat Moss in Lanarkshire, tonnes of peat are being stripped out for use in horticulture, scarring the land with deep black lines and making a travesty of Scotland’s great peatland heritage. And as the diggers delve deeper, more trapped carbon is released, oxidised into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide – directly contributing to climate change.
How these two activities can carry on at the same time, in the same country, is baffling. It’s like decorating your house while simultaneously demolishing it. For peatland restoration to truly succeed, extraction must end: and the only way to do that is legislation to halt peat sales, as soon as possible, across the UK. We’ll continue our work to make that happen: and if you live in Scotland, you can help too by contacting your MSP and demanding they stand up in Parliament and demand protection for this most ancient of landscapes. Thank you.
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