The last few weeks of March 2019 saw the end to the biggest work season ever for the Partnership. From September 2018 to March 2019 our teams worked tirelessly in all weathers to conduct vital work restoring the peatlands of the Peak District National Park and South Pennines.
In the 2018–19 season, the team:
- spread a total of 17,728 bags of heather brash (to provide cover, preventing further erosion and allowing plants to germinate)
- re-vegetated 86.9 hectares (re-seeding species which thrive in blanket bog)
- installed 4015 grip and gully blocks (mini dams to slow the flow of water from the moors)
- cut 96.6 hectares of dominant vegetation to encourage a diverse mix of moorland plants
- planted 837.2 hectares of sphagnum moss (the essential building block of healthy blanket bog)
- conducted 1092.5 hectares of invasive species control (cutting back plants such as rhododendrons to allow native species to flourish).
Most of this work was done as part of 3 major projects:
- MoorLIFE 2020, funded by EU LIFE, Yorkshire Water, United Utilities and Severn Trent
- Moor Carbon, funded by Defra
- Private Lands Portfolio, funded by Natural England
This Herculean task was completed before the end of March, when the conservation team vacate the moors, to allow the bird breeding season to take place undisturbed.
