When you design a site for restoration, no matter how thorough you are, a small part of you is worried that you’ve missed something. That something might go wrong. That after all this time and effort, the plan you’ve made might not work. The dams you’ve put in to hold water break, or have no water behind them. Or a wildfire burns through the site damaging all the hard work you have done.

Thankfully this is not often the case. Things work. And sometimes things work even better than you could have hoped. That was the case with the recent restoration Lancashire Wildlife Trust has completed on Darwen Moor.

Historically, like most of our upland blanket bog habitats, Darwen Moor was drained to allow for ‘better’ sheep grazing conditions. Overtime, the drains got larger, some of them becoming over 10m wide and 4m deep, grazing pressure continued, and in combination with a series of wildfires, devastated the sensitive peatlands.

What are bunds?

Bunds are lines of compressed peat which sit both above and below ground to form a waterproof barrier. In the lowland peatlands, deep trench bunding is a significant part of restoration, but in the uplands, it is more about installing ditch blocks and we use bunding where purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) is dominant.

Although this plant is a part of a natural blanket bog habitat, when a peatland is damaged and draining water, purple moor grass can become dominant and then poses a significant wildfire risk. Unlike most plants that drop their dead leaves, purple moor grass keeps the dead leaves attached to its main stem. This creates a bed of dry straw which during the summer becomes dry as a bone and a simple spark can ignite a vast area.

In their current state, the West Pennines are dominated by purple moor grass.

What is the solution?

The solution (or at least one of them) is to install bunding to stop water draining off the bog and restore the naturally high water table. Purple moor grass doesn’t like getting its feet too wet, and in the pools formed behind the bunds it gets outcompeted by cotton grasses and sphagnum mosses helping to reduce its dominance.

When first installed, bunding can make the land look drastically different. Where once it was flat, now it is bumpy and covered in small pools of water. Give it time. In a few years these bunds will disappear among the vegetation and the pools will become a carpet of sphagnum moss.

What does the wildlife think?

Since the bunding has been installed, we’ve seen red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotia) displaying on the tops of the bunds. Curlew (Numenius arquata) foraging in the pools for invertebrates. We have even seen a flock of golden plover (Pluvialis apricaria), over 30 individuals strong, utilising the new open water habitats that have been created. Most likely this flock was en route to its breeding grounds in Scandanavia, but there is a possibility some of these decided to stay and nest on Darwen Moor instead. As the habitat slowly restores, numbers of these bird species will also increase.

Our peatlands are incredibly special places. By restoring them we are not only restoring the habitat for a myriad of often rare and threatened species, we are also helping to naturally mitigate flooding and reducing the carbon emissions that degraded peatlands produce. The moral of the story. Let’s love our peatlands.

Learn more about the Lancashire Peat Partnership