In the world of peatland restoration, our lowland raised bogs are often left forgotten. Great swathes of watery, tussocked land stretch out for miles, fed by rainwater and filled with vital sphagnum mosses, the waving heads of fluffy cottongrass, and the bright purple of heather. They are home to some of our rarest and most important wildlife, from curlew and hen harriers to sundew and damselflies, and mounds of peat thousands of years old. Or rather, they should be. Instead, 94% of this internationally-important habitat has been destroyed or damaged in the UK because of the value the land provided historically for agriculture.

The Humberhead Peatlands are located in the Humberhead Levels, which straddles the borders of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, and are the largest area of raised bog in lowland Britain at 2,887 hectares – larger than the entire Stonehenge World Heritage site. The area is internationally important for species like breeding nightjars, as well as a number of rare insects; and yet Hatfield Moors and Thorne Moors are massively degraded due to large scale industrial peat extraction from the early 20^th century up until 2004. Without our help, this vital habitat will continue to degrade until it vanishes entirely.

Thorne and Hatfield Moors are home to nightjars, secretive and shy migrant summer visitors with a very disconcerting call, which are amber-listed and have declined over the years due to ongoing loss of their heathland habitat. They also host the incredibly rare scarce vapourer moth, which is restricted to just a few locations in Yorkshire and the surrounding counties and particularly vulnerable to large-scale land clearance.

Thankfully, a major project run by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust alongside Natural England and Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust seeks to continue to support the comeback of wildlife on Hatfield Moors and Thorne Moors, creating wilder spaces for the future. Funded by the Nature for Climate Peatland Restoration Grant, the project seeks to create new “goldilocks zones” where water levels and scrub are managed more effectively, creating more space for vital bog plants that will help the site to hold more carbon and create better habitat for wildlife.

By using tried and tested peatland restoration methods such as peat bunds to stop the flow of water, tilting weirs and adjustable sluices to manage the level of water, and scrub clearance and sphagnum planting to improve the peatland-specific flora, the project is hoping to reverse the huge impact historic peat extraction had on the site. Much of Thorne and Hatfield Moors are either too wet or too dry, with eroding, exposed bare peat under lakes of water, or scrubbed up areas with overgrown vegetation such as birch, bracken and invasive rhododendron, which spreads quickly and is difficult to control. 

There have already been a number of successes. The project currently has 820 hectares of peatland under restoration – over three times the size of York racecourse – that the team have surveyed by foot, by vehicle and even by drone to work out the most effective approach to each different area. As part of this, they have installed over 12km of peat bunding to keep the peat wet – with help from a group of incredibly dedicated volunteers, who between them have contributed over 4,500 hours of work since the project began. 

The Trust hopes to carry this energy forward into the winter of 2025, installing water controls to fine-tune the water levels over many hectares of Hatfield Moors. This additional control will allow bog plants like sphagnum moss to grow and reduce the amount of pooling water, which will in turn reduce carbon emissions from peat erosion. In time, the Trust hopes the Humberhead Levels will become a wild oasis once more – filled with damselflies, curlews, rare insects, a steady population of nightjars, and a slowly-growing and recovering supply of peat.