Opinion: A plan is needed to protect healthy landscapes and stop the burning

Driven grouse shooting involves breeding large numbers of grouse. One technique for doing this is to create the ideal habitats in which the birds can thrive – remodelling upland peat bog landscapes by burning the heather that grows on top of the peat. You can see the burns – and the air-polluting smoke they produce – from across my constituency, Shefffield Hallam, which extends from the city suburbs out into the countryside to the edge of the peak district.

Our peatlands have been called ‘Britain’s rainforests’ with the landscapes covering 15% of the UK. Healthy peatlands are globally rare, fragile ecosystems home to an abundance of wildlife. We have an international duty to protect and preserve them. Instead, the burns damage the sphagnum moss underneath the heather and the peat itself – drying it out and destroying the biodiversity hosted by it.

Importantly, too, peatlands are carbon sinks, storing more carbon than all the forests in the UK, France and Germany put together. Damaged peatlands release carbon into the atmosphere and water, emitting the same amount annually as the UK’s entire aviation industry, deepening the climate emergency.

As rising temperatures make our winters wetter, the burns also exacerbate the effects of the climate crisis. Healthy sphagnum moss slows the flow of rainwater water from the uplands into the valleys below. If the moss is burned away and the protective barrier it forms removed, flooding is made more likely.

It will come as no surprise to many in our city that only 1 in 10 peatlands are in good condition. Heather burning is one of the main causes of the degradation.

What’s needed is a plan to stop the burns and restore the damage, but Ministers are dragging their heels. Just look at the Climate Change Committee’s recent progress report to parliament on meeting our climate targets.

Not only do the Committee sound the alarm that the Government is going backwards on meeting net zero obligations, but they say ‘this is particularly the case for land-based measures like tree planting and peatland restoration, with nationally set targets – which are below that set out in the CCC’s Balanced Pathway – not being met’ (p.242).

On peatland restoration specifically, the Committee is clear that the Government is ‘significantly off track’ not only in meeting targets but setting ambition.

In 2021/22, the actual rate of restoration was 12,700 hectares per year, while the Government target was 29,000. The CCC recommend rate is 67,000 hectares per year by 2025, requiring that the target is more than doubled and that the current dismal restoration rates are increased by more than five-fold in the next two years. Ministers have given no serious indication of how they will achieve this.

In 2021 – after pressure – the government did pass regulations to prevent burning on deep peat (that which is deeper than 40cm) without a license. But that allows burning to continue on 60% of the UK’s uplands.

The licensing system isn’t even working on its own terms. For the 2022/23 season, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds received 260 reports of fires in England. 87% were recorded inside specially protected sites and 32% were believed to be on peat deeper than 40cm.

28% of the reported fires were suspected to be potential breaches of the regulations. They were reported to Natural England and Defra but, to date, only one estate has been prosecuted for 6 breaches (although a number of other reports are the subject of ongoing investigations).

Protecting and restoring habitats and the complex ecosystems they support must be at the heart of our response to the climate crisis. To meet the challenge of the twin climate and nature emergency, we need a serious plan to protect healthy landscapes, stop the burning, and coordinate the restoration of our peatlands – before it’s too late.