Volunteers needed to protect Peak District from wildfire
Will you join us on Tuesday 10 or Sunday 22 February to plant sphagnum moss in the Eastern Moors to restore and protect this at-risk area from wildfire?
Sign up quick, there are still a few BMC Get Stuck In volunteer places available to plant sphagnum moss on Burbage Moor in the Peak District on Tuesday 10 or Sunday 22 February, with our longterm collaborators, Moors for the Future Partnership.
The wetter we can make the peat bog, the more likely it is to survive a wildfire, and sphagnum moss holds up to 20 times its own weight in water! Planting this little, green moss is the last stage in the rehabilitation of a badly eroded and degraded peatland, and you can be a part of it.
How easy is planting sphagnum?
Super easy! Simply sign up on Eventbrite, pack a lunch, wear your usual walking gear (remember extra layers, it might be cold!), take a pair of gardening gloves if you have them, and meet a team of likeminded, friendly volunteers and staff from Moors for the Future Partnership below Burbage Moor (sign up for full details).
Together you walk a short distance to the planting site. A Moors for the Future staff member or volunteer will then take you through the very simple sphagnum planting process - dibbing a small hole and poking your plug of moss inside it.
Then you're let loose on the moor, dibbing and planting away to your heart's content for a few hours, either solo or in pairs.
There might even be a choccy biccy involved. You know you want to!
Why do we care about degraded peat bogs?
Well, apart from them looking bloomin' ugly as we climb up the craggy sides of them or their muddier parts trying to steal our boots as we walk across them, peat bogs are a hugely important store of global carbon. Moors for the Future have very kindly pulled together a webpage of bog-tastic info, including the fact that English peatlands store the equivalent of 580 million tonnes of carbon (source: Natural England), and one hectare of restored blanket bog avoids 19 tonnes of carbon loss per year (source: DEFRA).
So with the UK hogging a whopping 13% of the world's boglands, it makes sense to restore them to their squelchy, wet glory. The more water the bog can hold, the more it prevents flooding, not to mention the thousands of plants, insets, amphibians, birds and animals it supports, like curlews, golden plovers, hen harriers and the elusive mountain hare.
The sphagnum moss our volunteers plant on our Get Stuck In days is essential to forming peat, which accumulates at about 1mm per year. This little, green plant holds up to 20 times its weight in water, so the more sphagnum we can pop into the ground, the soggier we can make the bog, making it much more resilient to wildfire and erosion.
Have we persuaded you yet? Sign up now!
Can't make the dates? Consider gifting us the amount you would have spent traveling to this event.
Help us protect the Eastern Moors from wildfire:
- £10 funds a roll of 20 sphagnum moss plugs
- £25 fully restores 1m2 of moorland
- £50 stabilises bare peat with cut heather
- £100 funds ten educational social media posts on wildfire prevention
- £200 builds a 2m-wide dam to block and rewet a badly eroded gully
- £2,000 hires a highly visual LED wildfire-prevention road sign
- £50,000 funds a Wildfire Ranger
Donate to us for FREE!
Did you know that you can donate to the BMC Access & Conservation Trust entirely FREE simply by shopping online as you usually would, at any time of the year with Easyfundraising? It only takes two minutes to set up, here's how.
Donate to us (not for free!)
If you want to contribute to upland and mountain access and conservation causes like the above, then simply click here to donate to The BMC Access & Conservation Trust via The Climate Project or Mend Our Mountains campaigns at any time. One-off or regular donations of any amount are always most welcome.
Volunteer
Fancy fixing footpaths in the Lake District, placing stepping stones in Eryri or planting sphagnum in the Peak District? Sign up to one of our Get Stuck In events here. And if you can't volunteer, why not gift us the amount you would have spent in fuel or on a train fare getting to a volunteer event?
Leave a legacy
A wise person once said, the most noble thing you can do is to "plant trees under whose shade you will never sit" and, likewise, fund path repair projects on which you will never walk and moorland restoration projects which you will never see. If you'd like to make a lasting impact on the landscape long after you've left this world, please consider leaving us a legacy.
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