Holcombe Moor rewetting peat scheme to provide fire resilience

More than 3,000 scallop-shaped embankments have been built across Holcombe Moor in a National Trust-led scheme to restore degraded peatland and boost resilience to wildfire and flooding.

The semi-circular “scallop bunds” are made of peat and covered with vegetation. They trap rainwater across thousands of spots, creating pools and boggy ground that support wildlife and help re-establish water-holding sphagnum moss.

The National Trust has planted around 1.5 million clumps of sphagnum so far as part of the restoration.

Nik Taylor, area ranger and supervisor for the project, said: “We’ve proven that actually on the ground, it doesn’t make a massive difference to the landscape characteristics, the aesthetics of the place.

“But it can create so many benefits, one of which is wildfire resilience.”

Restoration work has also taken place on the charity’s Stubbins Estate.

This has included damming gullies, installing “leaky dams” lower down the hillside, and protecting exposed peat.

The project serves multiple purposes: rewetting peat to store carbon, supporting rare moorland wildlife, and slowing water flow to reduce flooding in the River Irwell catchment.

Holcombe Moor, like much of the UK’s uplands, has suffered from centuries of burning, drainage, grazing, and pollution.

This has left deep, damaged peat—up to 4.5 metres thick in places—cut through with gullies and “weather edges” where erosion exposes the peat to further damage.

While traditional peatland schemes often focus on damming gullies to allow water to spread more slowly across the moor, the scallop bunds accelerate the process by holding water in thousands of small pools.

Mr Taylor said: “First of all trying to stop the rot, stop the degradation.

“Then we rewet and plant sphagnum that in time allows us to accumulate peat, that’s a millennial process, but at least it means it’s not deteriorating, so we start to sequester, not lose (carbon).”

He estimates the landscape is about three-fifths restored, but that full recovery could take up to 50 years.

The National Trust has worked closely with commoners who have grazing rights, bringing them into a Countryside Stewardship scheme that rewards reduced livestock and supports the peatland work.

Other project partners include the Environment Agency, Defra, Natural England, the Ministry of Defence, United Utilities, and tenant farmers.

Ben Eardley, nature recovery project manager at the National Trust, said: “With climate change, these extreme weather patterns are locked in now; it’s the new normal, so we need to rethink our relationship with rivers in these catchments.

“With peatland restoration, what you’re doing is trying to restore ecosystem function to a whole habitat, so then you get multiple benefits, during all weather conditions.”

On Holcombe Moor, the ground remained wet even during a recent dry summer that saw wildfires break out elsewhere.

Mr Taylor demonstrated the impact by driving a stick into the peat and finding it damp just below the surface.

He also squeezed water from a handful of sphagnum moss.

The newly created wet conditions have already benefitted wildlife. Dunlin, a bird species that was “just hanging on,” has seen its numbers increase.

Communities downstream have also noticed changes, with no flooding reported during a recent storm, just weeks after a new set of leaky dams was completed.

The wet ground conditions have also improved wildfire resilience.

Mr Taylor said: “It’s stayed wetter in the areas where we’ve done the scallop bunding on deep peat.

“It stays wetter for longer, and the groundwater level rises closer to the surface for longer, and that makes the ground more resilient to those deep fires that can get into the peat.”