Recently, IUCN UK Peatland Programme met with staff from Moorland Association, Natural England and North Pennines AONB Partnership at Wemmergill Estate, near Barnard Castle, to discuss how to deliver healthy blanket bog on an active moorland grouse estate. Natural England has been working with the owner, estate manager and head gamekeeper at Wemmergill to develop a new long term management plan, which aims to facilitate functioning blanket bog, whilst maintaining the structural and vegetative diversity suitable for red grouse. This new plan, just signed off, looks to use a traffic light system to indicate areas for intervention.
Out on site, Wemmergill’s head keeper, along with their Natural England Lead Adviser demonstrated areas that the new management plan would benefit and how monitoring would be put in place to ensure that once the plan is implemented any impacts are measured. The keeper spoke of a move away from rotational burning towards a range of management interventions to help meet both aims of healthy blanket bog and suitable red grouse habitat. Where possible IUCN UK Peatland Programme advised taking a minimal intervention approach.
Clifton Bain, Director of IUCN UK Peatland Programme, said of the estate:
“This site is a hugely important example of a rare suite of peatland habitats and we should all be proud of its international significance.”
Promising signs of blanket bog vegetation and breeding wading birds were evident in areas of Wemmergill and North Pennines AONB Partnership’s Peatland Programme had already been working with the estate to grip block drains across the site, which was clearly having a positive effect.
Alongside the work of Natural England and Wemmergill Estate, a task and finish group of the Uplands Management Group, chaired by Amanda Anderson of Moorland Association, has been working to develop new guidance for land managers that considers the state of peatlands and provides accompanying trajectories. This work neatly compliments that of Natural England, which is trialling its new approach to management plans with a number of other grouse estates in addition to Wemmergill to implement the Defra Blanket Bog Restoration Strategy. IUCN UK Peatland Programme hopes to continue working with all parties to ensure public and private support for common goals associated with healthy peatlands.
For more information on the Uplands Management Group see www.uplandsmanagement.co.uk.
