Just a short post to add my congratulations to Lancashire Wildlife Trust for their successful campaign to stop peat ‘winning’ (a euphemism is ever there was one) at Chat Moss in Great Manchester.
Our lowland peatlands like Chat Moss have a taken a beating from the commercial extraction of peat for horticulture leaving tattered remnants of huge importance to their localities and the wildlife that depends on them. Some 95% of this peaty habitat has been lost – in other words for every 20 hectares of lowland peatland – only one is still going.
Chat Moss has appeared in these posts a couple of times before, here and here. Throughout, the direction of travel for peat extraction is clear – it will end, eventually. So Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, deserves praise for taking the right decision and taking the pressure off Chat Moss.
Here’s Lancashire Wildlife Trusts news on their win and here’s Olly Watts from our Climate Team highlighting that keeping peat in the ground isn’t good just for the local wildlife but for our climate too.
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