Good practice

• Maintain wet conditions. Blocking grips, gullies and drains to retain rain water will allow the water table to re-stabilise and peat-forming species to colonise areas that have dried out or been affected.
• Revegetate bare peat with sphagnum and other blanket bog species. Halting the erosion and stabilising bare peat will allow sphagnum and the other blanket bog species to be reintroduced.
• Maintain a varied structure: boggy pools, flushes, wet peat, sedge and rush stands, hummocks and tussocks, some dwarf shrubs;  reduce any Heather or Molina dominance.
• Appropriate grazing is the main way of maintaining a mosaic of structure; overgrazing will reduce the structural diversity and species richness of vegetation and the quality of the habitat.
• Avoid burning: Burning is best replaced with a more sympathetic form of management such as cutting or low-level grazing.
• Prevent nutrient enrichment and pollution of the water table, and prevent succession to heath or scrub and afforestation
• Minimise disturbance. Make sure that too much access by the public does not cause damage.

Legal protection

The blanket bog in the Peak District is protected within the Dark Peak SSSI which also forms part of the South Pennine Moors SPA and SAC).

National policies have a presumption against clearance of blanket bog for other land uses and development.

Sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) are protected by law in order to conserve their habitats and wildlife.

All the blanket bog outside the SSSI is within a Local Wildlife Site (LWS).

LWS have a presumption against development and change of use but have no legal protection against operations that do not require planning consent.

The Defra Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA) Regulations may apply.

Activities on blanket bog where protected species are present may involve offences being committed under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Protected species include all breeding birds. Licences may be needed from Natural England.

Conservation. Although the quality of the blanket bog habitat has suffered significantly -there are substantial areas of drying out and eroding moor- there is potential for restoration and conservation.

Factors causing loss or decline

• Historic peat extraction and conversion to pasture or plantations.
• Past drainage leading to drying out and erosion of Blanket Bog
• Heavy,overgrazing by sheep or inappropriate or accidental burning, reduces the structural and species diversity, promotes grassy growth and invites bracken invasion in some areas
• Atmospheric pollution depleting the lower plant flora (sulphur dioxide levels have decreased, but nitrous oxides have increased).
• Recreational disturbance leading to localised vegetation damage and possible disturbance to breeding birds.
• Climate change and its effects such as infestation of heather beetle due to mild winters and wet springs.

Natural England:
Restoration of blanket bog strategy

RSPB
Grip blocking

Buglife
Habitat management

Links

Moors for the Future:
Blanket Bog Land Management

 Blanket Bog Conservation