All of these threats don’t just
affect the part of the bog on which they occur.
Drainage needed to make these activities practical
and profitable affects the whole bog, so even
protected areas are suffering.
Losing the diversity of plant and animal
life and the records of the past is only part of the
problem. There is a much bigger issue at stake –
the future survival of the Earth and all plant and
animal communities.
A global problem: conserving
peat and helping the future>
Getting involved (1)
Conservation: working for the future
Greenhead Moss is just one example of a
small peatland that has been saved. The future of the
palaeoecology and archaeology records stored in many
other peat bogs, and the survival of the plants and
animals living on and around them is under threat.
Saving Burns Bog: an example in
British Columbia:
www.burnsbog.org
In some areas it is already too late
– in the Netherlands and Poland, all natural
bogs have been lost, and in Switzerland and Germany
very little remains. In the UK around 98% of the
original area of raised bogs have been lost – a
massive 94% of this has happened since the start of
the nineteenth century! In the Scottish
lowlands, the area including Greenhead Moss, only 5%
of the original area of raised bog is still thought
to be in a relatively intact state. By the
1980s, this formed a minute 0.2% of the area of
Scotland. From 1940 to 1980, most of the lost
peat has been replaced by plantations and drained for
grassland.
Even this small percentage of bog
remaining in the UK is still a bigger area of less
disturbed peatland than any other country in the
European Community. This makes it even more
important to conserve our remaining peatlands.
We need to preserve bogs for the past,
the present and the future.
1. For
the past:
They are the best and most complete library we have,
covering thousands of years before written
history.They can tell us so much about the
countryside – the plants and wildlife, about
people and how they used and affected the landscape,
and about the past climate. You can put these all
together to work out how they affected one another.
The story presented here about Greenhead Moss is part
of this complex network of relationships.
The peat library>
The story of Greenhead Moss>
2. For
the present:
Peatlands provide habitats for a surprising variety
of animals and plants, many of which are specially
adapted to this wet, low nutrient environment. This
includes the carpet of red, bright green and yellow Sphagnum
mosses, cotton grass, bog bean and carnivorous sundew
and butterwort plants, which trap insects on sticky
hairs and then digest them to get enough nutrients
and minerals to live.
Many birds and insects also need bogs to
survive. This ranges from colourful dragonflies and
butterflies, to rare beetles. Raised bogs are also
important summer breeding grounds and wintering areas
for many birds, including golden plovers and dunlins,
whose song adds to the special quality of
bogs.Several types of geese and birds of prey, like
merlins and hen harriers, also overwinter on bogs.
From October you can see some
of these overwintering birds
www.rspb.org.uk/webcams
This diversity of plant and
animal life - biodiversity - combines to make
foodchains which can stretch much farther than the
bog. We need these complex webs to survive because
the destruction of parts of the system can have
far-reaching impacts, now and in the future.
More about special bog plants
and animals, habitat and species conservation>
RSPB: www.rspb.org.uk/
Irish
Peatland Conservation Council: www.ipcc.ie/index.html
Scottish
Wildlife Trust: www.swt.org.uk/
In many areas of high rainfall,
like the Scottish Highlands, blanket peat forms a
protective layer over thin soils, which would
otherwise be eroded and washed off hills and into
rivers and reservoirs, causing problems far from
bogs.
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