A million pound project to restore Dorset’s peat

Dorset Peat Partnership, led by Dorset Wildlife Trust, has been awarded a £750,000 grant from Defra's Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme, matched by £250,000 from other funders and partners to fund work on 16 sites across Dorset to rewet and restore 172 hectares of fragmented and damaged peatlands.
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Dorset's iconic heathlands hold the largest areas of our county's peat in 'peaty pockets' and valley mires. Peatlands are England's largest land-based carbon store, yet most of them are degraded and emitting carbon, because they are not wet enough to be building up peat.  

The grant has been awarded following 18 months of survey work by the partnership organisations and volunteers to gather data on an initial long list of 80 candidate sites across urban and rural Dorset and then to identify 16 sites where the most successful restoration can be achieved. This funding will enable restoration of these sites to hold water for longer each year which will reduce the amount of carbon emitted from degraded peat and once restored, allow carbon sequestration. The work will also improve drought and fire resilience by holding more water in the landscape during the summer and by increasing site capacity for water storage, it will also help to reduce nuisance flooding year-round.  

Dorset Peat Partnership is part of Dorset Catchment Partnerships and is hosted by Dorset Wildlife Trust. Other partners include Natural England, Environment Agency, Forestry England, Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole (BCP) Council, Dorset Council, National Trust, RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and Bournemouth University, plus one private landowner.