Dr Peter Jones has been restoring peatlands in Wales for the past 30yrs. These landscapes are vital to the climate crisis, as healthy peatland can slow the flow of water, help prevent flooding, act as natural firebreak during wildfires and are home to many scarce or threatened invertebrates. Peatlands also store 30% of Wales’s land-based carbon, despite covering only 4% of the surface. However, the majority are degraded, meaning they leak carbon instead of store it.
However, historically, peatland was perceived as having very little value, so trees were planted on them and farmers encouraged to drain them for agriculture. This lead to the damaged peatland becoming prone to erosion and all the peat in those areas being slowly eroded away.
Jones and his colleagues help farmers and landowners restore peatland to a healthy state, signified by, grasses, sedges, heathers and bog mosses, by using over 100 techniques including blocking drains and ditches and re-establishing bog vegetation.
