Dovestone Reservoir volunteers are celebrating after planting their one millionth sphagnum moss at the reservoir.
Volunteers gathered with RSPB and landowner United Utilities to mark the moment on a rainy and windy Wednesday morning.
According to site manager Kate Hanley, who has been with the RSPB for 14 years, the moss has biodiversity benefits and flood management benefits.
The moss can trap more than 20 times its weight in water, making the landscape more resistant to fires and resilient to drought.
@theoldhamtimes Dovestone Reservoir volunteers are celebrating after planting their one millionth sphagnum moss at the reservoir. Volunteers gathered with RSPB and landowner United Utilities to mark the moment on a rainy and windy Wednesday morning. According to site manager Kate Hanley, who has been with the RSPB for 14 years, the moss has biodiversity benefits and flood management benefits. The moss can trap more than 20 times its weight in water, making the landscape more resistant to fires and resilient to drought. Having been planted by hand at the site for 10 years, the sphagnum moss is purchased from external suppliers, with bundles of 20 plants coming wrapped in a potato starch film. Within five to 10 years, however, Kate hopes it will no longer need to be purchased as the growing supply around the reservoir can be used instead. The planting programme is part of a wider ambition to restore the landscape around the reservoir, which has suffered from humans cutting vegetation since Neolithic times. Stone dams and peat dams have also been built to trap water – creating habitats for insects to feed native birds, and preventing carbon-rich peat from being washed by rain into the water supply. The wider ambition for the restoration is to plant more than one million trees, which will be smaller scrub rather than larger conifer or forestry, as well as flower-rich grassland and heather, around the reservoir.
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Having been planted by hand at the site for 10 years, the sphagnum moss is purchased from external suppliers, with bundles of 20 plants coming wrapped in a potato starch film.
Within five to 10 years, however, Kate hopes it will no longer need to be purchased as the growing supply around the reservoir can be used instead.
The planting programme is part of a wider ambition to restore the landscape around the reservoir, which has suffered from humans cutting vegetation since Neolithic times.
Stone dams and peat dams have also been built to trap water – creating habitats for insects to feed native birds, and preventing carbon-rich peat from being washed by rain into the water supply.
The wider ambition for the restoration is to plant more than one million trees, which will be smaller scrub rather than larger conifer or forestry, as well as flower-rich grassland and heather, around the reservoir.
Speaking to The Oldham Times, site manager Kate said: “We are wanting a landscape that sequesters carbon and slows floodwaters, and supports lots of biodiversity, and is somewhere that gives people really nice health and wellbeing benefits.
“We’ve come a really long way on that journey from bare, degraded, peat 10 years ago, to sphagnum-rich, soaking wet, functional blanket bog.
“One of the major reasons that we’ve come so far is because our wonderful volunteers have helped us plant over a million plants of sphagnum over the last decade – they have given us over 45,000 hours of time, which is equivalent to about 20 years of a full time member of staff, which is just astonishing.
“They are up here, day-in, day-out, whatever the weather: sleet, rain, occasionally sunshine, but not very often. It doesn’t matter to them, because they really believe in what they do and they really believe in restoring these upland landscapes.
“We all know we are entering a time of climate change and biodiversity loss. If we are to reverse those problems we need to restore our big upland landscapes like this, so they need to store carbon, they need to slow floodwaters, give us water in times of drought, support biodiversity, they need to give us clean water for drinking.”
One such volunteer is Denzil Broadhurst, who joined when he began working four days a week.
Now retired, the 71-year-old says he volunteers with the RSPB twice a week.
The Uppermill resident said: “I’ve known this area for 50 years, I’ve walked over it when it’s been appalling – just thick, black peat bog everywhere. It needed lots and lots of work.
“We needed to get it back to something that looked how it used to look, with vegetation that was good for the wildlife, good for the birds, good for the mountain hares, and everything else. It was important to actually try and help to do that work, to improve things.”
United Utilities’ Ed Lawrance said: “United Utilties own this site because we want the water quality coming off it to be as good as possible. For a long time we’ve been working with the RSPB to improve the quality of the habitat, to improve the raw water that comes off it.
“By keeping moisture on the hill, slowing the flow of moisture, and in gullies, acting as a filter, the water that comes off this hill – as I’m sure many people have seen – is a very dark brown colour, but it’s much cleaner if it runs through sphagnum moss.”
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