” Of most concern was the finding that no one from the contributing farms/estates, contracting agencies, contractors or funding agencies had any idea as to whether their actions had achieved the long-term objectives as no or very little follow-up monitoring had been done.”
Climate projections present a challenging future for our upland peatlands and the carbon stored in them. Good peat management that keeps the carbon in the ground is by far the biggest contribution that upland land managers can make to mitigate climate change impacts whilst also benefiting a range of other public goods such as biodiversity, flood mitigation and water quality. But little analysis has been made of the effectiveness of the peatland restoration techniques employed, given the investment of taxpayers’ money by government. Peaky BlindSpots was a project funded by Defra that sought to fill this gap.
In the Peak District the majority of peatland restoration work is undertaken by the National Park through the Moors for the Future Partnership, who employ contractors to do the work. Peakland Environmental Farmers Limited (PEF) was created in 2022, and its 80+ landholding members, responsible for over 40,000 hectares of upland territory, wished to identify the most effective and cost-efficient ways of adopting sustainable farming and environmental practices.