Peatland Recovery - Restoring the Wild
The Abergwesyn group of Commons is a large, complex and extremely important area of upland. Around 80 active commoners and a range of organisations (RSPB & NRW) have a strong and varied interest in this land, but they also share a collective ambition that the land should be healthy and productive. Abergwesyn Commons are remote and are categorised as “wild” under the National Trusts (NT) countryside categorisation criteria. Using scales of increasing naturalness, ruggedness, absence of recent built manmade structures, distance from roads, dark skies and so on, Abergwesyn Commons and the rest of the Cambrian Mountains comprise some of the wildest land in the UK.
Abergwesyn Hill is one of eight adjoining commons owned by the National Trust in this part of mid-Wales and alone covers an area of approximately 2000ha.
EnviroCulture has focused peatland restoration work on the worst affected area of degraded peatland on Abergwesyn Hill, which equates to approximately 143ha.
The vision for Abergwesyn Hill is to see the very large tracts of blanket bog, containing 90% cover of sphagnum mosses, with dwarf shrubs and cotton grass, indicating a high-water table. Standing water should be present all year round. There should be no bare peat or man-made drainage, with any historic drains being blocked. The vegetation should be kept uneven, achieved by an extensive grazing regime including hardy cattle, ponies, and fewer sheep. Shorter cropped areas of vegetation will provide ideal nesting opportunities for a range of breeding birds, most notably golden plover, and curlew.
The works we carried out focus primarily on peat hagg reprofiling, taking down hagg 'cliffs' to more gentler slopes, revegetating using plant material on-site and covering all bare peat areas. Peat 'islands' are to be removed and utilised in the reprofiling works or in establishing vegetation covered, inter-locking, low-level bunds as the gullies move downhill. All works are to be undertaken as progress is made following the watercourses downhill to avoid any over tracking of freshly profiled ground.
Before
After
