Page 72 - BBC Wildlife - August 2017 UK

8 SPECIES OF HEATHER MOORLAND

HEATHER SPHAGNUM MOSS BILBERRY COTTONGRASS
The purple-pink wildflower A super-absorbent plant that A dwarf shrub that produces Not a grass, but a sedge,
from which heather moorland can take in eight times its blue-black berries July-August and needs wet, boggy areas.
gets its name. Flowers July- weight in water and forms and also known as blaeberry, Distinctive, cotton-like flowers
September and flourishes carbon-storing peat. Can’t whinberry and whortleberry. appear April-June.Two main
in drier, acidic soils. survive drainageoracid rain. Closely related to blueberries. species found on moorland.

family says, ‘If we thought any hen harriers Restoring Dove Stone has involved years – Thompson says: “Birds are not necessarily
had been killed, we would pack up shooting.’ I of painstaking work such as rewetting small agood indicator of habitat quality.” What he
would be finished [in this job] if I did that.” gullies by blocking them with stone dams so means is that while some species, such as
that sphagnum can recolonise bare patches golden plovers – and red grouse, of course –
GIVE PEAT A CHANCE of peat – in seven years, 12km of gullies have thrive in a managed, heather habitat, others
For Patrick Thompson, the broader impact of been treated this way. In other areas, bare peat don’t. In contrast, blanket bog encourages
grouse shooting on the environment is as big has been reseeded with sphagnum clumps. greater abundance of insects like cranesflies.
a problem as illegal persecution of raptors. At Funding has come from the landfill tax and
the RSPB’s Dove Stone reserve, on the edge agri-environment subsidies, but much of the DEFINING SUCCESS
D etr ch/Imagebroker/FLPA; A ex Hyde/NPL; Andrew Park nson/2020VISION/NPL;
of Greater Manchester in the Peak District, I physicallabour is done byvolunteers. “We At Bolton Abbey,Paul Wilby and Amanda
get a sense of what he means. spent £1,500 on cake for volunteers last year,” Anderson say they too want to see greater
Here, site manager Dave O’Hara and his O’Hara says, “But they love doing it, and we plant diversity. The seedheads of wet-lovingg
team are restoring peat-forming sphagnum got 20,000 hours of work out of them.” cottongrass provide excellent protein for aduult
mosses and moorland shrubs such as bilberry The workhas
s (x3) to a landscape that was, just a decade ago they paid off for breeding
say, adversely affected byyears of grouse- dunlin, whichhave THE PUBLIC
Mark Hamblin/2020VISION/NPL; Loic Poidevin/NPL; bottom left to right: Ben Hall/RSPB (x2); Eilidh Thompson/RSPB; Dave W
shooting, sheep-grazing and pollution. rocketed from seven ` THINKS
Exposed peat was being eroded by wind pairs in 2004 to 44
and water and passing into and silting up the last year, whileshort- MOORLANDS
reservoir, to the extent that its capacity to store eared owls dowell ARE COLD AND
water had been reduced by one third. “If we here, too.
hadn’t done this work,itwould have carried But when I remark MISERABLE,
on filling up with peat,” Thompson says. that Bolton Abbey AND WE NEED
Another consequence of degraded uplands appears to have
is increased water run-off where blanket bogs fantastic numbers TO CHANGE
have been lost. Regular flooding events in of golden plovers THAT.”
– which are also at
towns such as Hebden Bridge, in theCalder
ckw nke /A amy; A ex Hyde/NPL; N ck Upton/NPL; M chae
Dove Stone, but not
Valley, are blamedby some experts on this.
Patrick Thompson, RSPB
Others say increased rainfall is more to blame.
in such great density
uplands policy officer

eft to r ght: b At RSPB Dove Stone, Bales slow the flow of
hay bales are used to
water in the gullies,
allowing sphagnum moss
block gullies that have
top been rewetted. to recolonise them.
72 BBC Wildlife 2