They're Transforming Dead Land Into Thriving Wetlands.

They're flooding this UK desert. I know that sounds a little backwards but by the end of this video you'll understand why putting water back here could be one of the most important restoration projects happening in Britain. I'm up on the West Pennine Moors again to show you a brand new restoration area. Last time we were out here we saw some really fresh bunding which had been dug over on Winter Hill which is nearby but today I'm going to show you a completely new site, one that I haven't seen before. Throughout its life it's been quarried, it's seen peat extraction and it's ultimately shifted from its natural state. It was once a thriving peatland, a beautiful boggy wetland habitat. They are incredibly important for the climate and environment, not to mention they are rich places for biodiversity. Bogs like this have declined in the UK by over 80 percent, structurally damaged with many in a degenerating condition. However in this video we're going to look at the ways this vital habitat is being restored here and how life is beginning to return. Just trying to film a dragonfly, there was two just absolutely battling it out. I think it's some kind of display of territory or they could be about to get jiggy, you never know. This is Orsham Moss and it's owned by the Blackburn with Darwin Borough Council and the work here is now managed by the Lancashire Peat Partnership. And Alex who we met up here last year, he's been telling me all about the fantastic work which they've been doing here, so let's get into it. When I make these videos about restoring UK uplands it's worth me clarifying the word desert. You see here in the UK we've been misled into thinking that our uplands, our most wild areas should be treeless, that they should be these barren empty spaces with just a handful of species or a monoculture of what you're seeing right now which is a grass species known as purple moor grass, millennia. Purple moor grass has taken over because it grows in these tough clumps that turn into vast dry dead blankets every autumn. This smothers and kills native plants like heather and moss and it became dominant because humans spent decades, centuries drying out the wetlands with drainage ditches which created the perfect dry ground for this grass to move in. And today's land management helps it thrive because farmers now mostly just graze sheep and they refuse to eat this tough grass, leaving it free to take over. But also landowners will set fire to the moors to clear them of this dead grass but this of course kills everything, the grass along with the animals and any other plant species which are there. And whether if these fires are controlled burns or if they're accidental or maybe even arson, the bottom line is that the management here isn't working because the millennia comes back with a vengeance with the fire acting as a stimulant for its domination. It is just not the way to be managing the uplands and because of this monoculture that's why we call it a desert, a green desert. And the real problem for me is that so many of us look at this and we think it's natural. We cannot accept this as the norm, you know millions of people come out and enjoy our uplands each year. Just imagine if they were full of thriving bogs, rainforests and just full of animals which are now missing. How much better would it be if we could go out and explore landscapes which were truly thriving? And that's a big reason why I make these videos. I want to get out and I want to experience nature and that's why I'm really proud to say for this video I'm partnering with Vivo Barefoot. So Vivo, they make the best hiking boots. Just look at how this boot moves. That flexibility, that suppleness means that my ankle, my feet, my toes, my whole foot can move to the environment around it and that's great because it means my foot can be properly strong but also it means I can feel the world around me. With barefoot shoes it's often a worry about a lack of comfort but I go as far to say these are the most comfortable shoes I own. So here you have, this is the Forest Tracker, this is a Michelin grade sold which is designed for the forest ecosystem. They do a bunch of shoes for different ecosystems but what I find is that there's just enough cushioning to let me feel the world around me while still giving me protection. They're strong, they're water resistant and I don't normally wear odd shoes, well not intentionally anyway, but I've done it to show you my two favorites. These ones here, these are the Forest Trackers. They're made from leather, super soft and supple and these ones are another hiking tracker boot. These are made from a textile material. I am pretty passionate about this and you know Vivos, they don't just do hiking boots, they do all sorts. These are my daughter's little shoes. I feel they're meant to be free, they're meant to move, they're meant to feel, you know, they're not meant to be tight and buttoned up and right now is the best time to get some Vivos as there is a 25% discount until the end of July. But if you've missed this, don't worry there will still be 15% off. Discount codes will be in the description of this video. Thank you to Vivo for partnering with Leafcurious and supporting this video. Now let's be honest, unlike more charismatic habitats like temperate rainforests, chalk streams or seagrass meadows, peat bogs don't exactly catch your eye, at least at first glance. But I'd encourage you to not judge them too quickly because bogs have a beauty all their own. And practically speaking, they might just be one of the most important habitats that we have in the UK. Peatlands here store an estimated three billion tons of carbon. That's more carbon than all of the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. There are also giant natural sponges that soaks up rainfall and slows the flow of water through the landscape and helps reduce flooding downstream. And every time you pour yourself a glass of tap water, there's a good chance a peatland helped clean it first. Around 70% of the UK's drinking water comes from catchments dominated by peatlands. But here's the problem. That three billion tons of carbon only stays locked away if the peat stay wet. Over the last few centuries, we've drained, dug up and damaged around 80% of the UK's peatlands. As the water disappears, oxygen gets deep into the peat and thousands of years of ancient plant material slowly begins to decompose, releasing its stored carbon back into the atmosphere. And today, our damaged peatlands emit more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. That's roughly 4% of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. We're not just losing a habitat, we're slowly turning one of Britain's greatest natural carbon stores into a carbon source. But that's beginning to change here. Oshaw Moss wasn't always the wet recovering landscape which we see today. Up until around 40 years ago, this was an active peat extraction site. You see, peat is packed with carbon and once it's dried out, it burns incredibly well and it was a long-used fuel source. But much of it also ended up in our gardens as compost. Industry extracted and bagged up billions of litres of peat, selling an ancient ecosystem in plastic bags. To extract peat, long drainage ditches were dug to dry it out, like you can see here. And when extraction was no longer commercially viable, the site was abandoned, leaving behind the scars that are still visible today. You can actually see where the peat has been extracted from, you can actually see that they're now filling up with water, which is pretty cool. And these rectangular shapes are actually peat dams which were put in place by the council 15 years ago to restore it. Without these peat dams, these extraction areas would look like long continuous ditches, so it's really cool to see that it's working. So one of the restoration techniques which we're seeing here is bunding. Now these typically form in these kind of half moon shapes like we've seen before, but these ones here are kind of terraced as they go down the hillside. They're essentially low walls of peat which have been built across relatively flat areas of the bog where water would otherwise drain away. These bunds here act like a barrier. Oh look, dragonfly just skimming around over there! But it's these wetter conditions which are essential to help the bog recover. So what's clever is that these bunds are built using the peat that's already here, there's been no extra materials brought in. So how are they actually created? Well what I'm crouching down on now is really the top layer of peat which is scraped off with an excavator arm and flipped over. This top layer of peat is actually not very healthy, it's become polluted after centuries, but this exposes the healthy peat beneath which is then compacted down so the water can't escape below. This area then here is then built up and it kind of creates this, this kind of, well this one's oblong, but it normally creates this half moon shape so the water can't escape. Bunding is normally done on flatter land, land that doesn't have too much of a gradient, and it's also done in areas where there is the most millennia, so the most moor grass, which is what you're seeing around me now. But getting water back into the landscape, I don't know if you just saw that beautiful butterfly which just came by, getting the water back in is the absolute foundation of rebuilding these kinds of ecosystems. I'm seeing all kinds of insects, I'm hearing all kinds of insects, there was just two massive dragonflies which were just having it out. I don't know if it was a mating display or some display of territory, but Alex also told me that on this site they've seen 10 pairs of latwings nesting here, which is a huge win because they weren't here before the work. It's just awesome, but the first step is getting water back on the landscape. One of the biggest challenges of Vacheron Moss is undoing the network of drainage channels left behind by peat extraction. These channels here were initially dug to drain the peat to dry it out so it could be harvested, but the trouble with land drains is they stay in place, and you know even decades later it's still trying to take water off the landscape. So what they're doing is they're putting in different kinds of dams. So this dam here, this is a wooden, this is a timber dam, it looks like you've got essentially two planks with a couple of supporting stakes, and it just looks like it's working incredibly well. I mean that water's quite deep there, but there's one there, there's also one over there and there. You've got to put in a whole series of them, and these wooden ones really look like they're working. If it was five degrees warmer, I'd be tempted to get in there. Probably, probably wouldn't actually, although it is pretty damn hot. The other way of blocking up the drainage ditches is actually just by using the peat itself. As you can see here, it's working incredibly well here. But yeah, this method's great because you don't have to bring in any extra material. Oh look, dragonfly again, look two of them. So you've got wooden dam, wooden dam, peat dam, peat dam, peat dam, peat dam. You can see this is where the material has been taken out from, and it's been put over here. The more I think about peatland restoration, the more it reminds me of the beaver, because it's essentially doing the same thing. It's about slowing the flow of water through a landscape, essentially by using dams, by building dams from natural materials. I mean here we've got peat which is being used. I mean beavers are damn good excavators. They can make these beautiful curved edges, which is a lot like the bunning which we've seen. They would never come up and use timber and stakes, but what they would do is they would fell trees and build dams. You know, this peatland restoration, it really is kind of the best of both worlds. It's the marrying of what nature would do, and also at the industrial and scale of what humans can do. And it kind of opens up the question, would beavers ever make it up into our bogs? And you know, maybe they would. Maybe they would on the edges of the bogs and in the river valleys where there's more trees. Beavers need trees. You know, they can't exactly come up here and build dams out of the heather, although I'm sure they would try. Now another crucial part to restoring peatlands is getting an engineer back in the landscape. A plant known as sphagnum moss. I'm looking around now and I'm seeing plenty of little plugs which they've planted. This is really important to peat bogs because this is the plant which builds the peat. As it grows, the lower layers slowly die and this becomes permanently waterlogged, and they don't fully decompose. Instead, they gradually become new peat, adding to the bog at an astonishingly slow rate, at around one millimetre each year. But sphagnum cannot survive on dry peat. That's why step one is getting the water back into the landscape with the dams, with the bunding. You know, Alex told me that they're not only just planting sphagnum out here, they're also going to be planting out some dwarf shrubs, which is going to be really cool to see. Everything we do here at Leave Curious starts with hope, because despite all the doom and gloom, nature is coming back. Over the years, I've travelled all over the UK meeting incredible people restoring peatlands, rivers, forests and wildlife. But I've realised something. The videos end here on YouTube, while the restoration carries on. And we can only cover so much, because there are thousands of amazing projects across the world. But so many of them go unseen and under supported, simply because there isn't a good way for people to discover them or follow their progress. So behind the scenes, we're building something much bigger than this YouTube channel. I'm calling it Curious, and the goal is simple, to connect people who care about nature restoration with the people restoring it. It's still early, and right now, it's just the beginning, but I genuinely think it could be something really special. If you'd like to help us build it, I'd love for you to become a Leave Curious member. Every membership helps us continue making videos like this, and brings us one step closer to making Curious a reality. It's a monthly subscription, you can give more if you want to help, but it doesn't cost much, and a little goes a long way, because when we all come together, it really does add up. You'll find a link to this in the description of this video. Thank you. Big thank you to Alex, the Wildlife Trust, the Pete Partnership, and anyone else who has been involved with the restoration work here. It really is awesome. I'll leave a link to that stuff in the description of the video. And of course, Vivo Barefoot. Thank you so much for sponsoring this video. If you're on the fence and you're thinking about getting yourself a pair of Vivos, make use of the discount code. I'll leave a link to it on screen here, along with a video for you to keep watching next. But in the meantime, thank you so much for watching. Leave Curious.