It defended burning, saying: “Controlled burning in the winter is a crucial tactic for moorland management which removes excess vegetation but does not affect the underlying peat. In response to the analysis, the Moorland Association, which represents grouse moor owners in England, said its members protected, restored and enhanced deep peat on their land, which required careful management for sustainable grouse shooting.
Last week, the John Muir Trust, a charity set up to protect wild places in Britain, said taxing deer and grouse estates for failing to ensure their land properly locked up carbon dioxide could play a crucial role in fighting the climate crisis. Peat soils in England store 584m tonnes of carbon. And the UK government must tighten its peatland-burning legislation, so that landowners can no longer set fire to our carbon.”Ī peat bog restoration programme in North Yorkshire, UK, using coconut fibre to slow erosion. “The public urgently needs to challenge these landowners to protect and restore our peatlands, so that they help fix climate breakdown rather than making it worse. Shrubsole, a former policy and campaigns coordinator with Rewilding Britain, said: “England’s single largest carbon store is owned by a vanishingly small number of landowners, whose mismanagement of this ecosystem by burning and draining it is currently adding to the climate disaster. In the uplands, 249,000 hectares of peat are owned by 101 grouse moor estates, while 20 landowners oversee 43,706 hectares of lowland peat in the Fens, about one-third of the total, according to the analysis.Īlongside large areas owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence, just 124 landowners control more than 450,000 hectares of England’s peat.
A new report by Guy Shrubsole, environmental campaigner and author of Who Owns England?, has revealed that 60% of England’s peatlands are owned by a small group of people.
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