WaterLANDS H2020 (@waterlandsh2020.bsky.social)

Taking action to restore the Great North Bog - WaterLANDS UK The Great North Bog is the UK Action site for the WaterLANDS project which is restoring wetland sites across Europe. This EU project is spread across six ‘Action Sites’, where actions are needed to restore damaged freshwater and coastal wetlands, and ‘Knowledge Sites’ which have been identified as examples of where successful restoration has been achieved. The WaterLANDS UK team, which includes members of Yorkshire Integrated Solutions Programme, based at University of Leeds, has been working with the Great North Bog coalition to support blanket bog restoration at scale. This includes support around sustainable funding and governance, community engagement, developing the science behind restoration, capacity building across the sector, learning from best practices throughout the UK and Europe and working in partnership with regional and national stakeholders to respond to and to influence policy. water@leeds, at University of Leeds, hosts one of the 15 knowledge sites where past experiences are being used to inform future restoration through WaterLANDS and beyond. The Great North Bog coalition brings together the North Pennines National Landscape team, Yorkshire Peat Partnership, Moors for the Future Partnership, Northumberland Peat Partnership, Cumbria Peat Partnership and Lancashire Peat Partnership to protect and restore northern England’s upland peatlands. It includes four National Parks , (Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, Northumberland and Lake District) and three National Landscapes (Nidderdale, Forest of Bowland, North Pennines). The UK site is home to around 92% of the upland peat in England which, storing 400 million tonnes of carbon and providing a broad range of ecosystem services. The blanket bogs across the Great North Bog have been heavily degraded as a result of human activity that includes pollution, burning, artificial drainage, livestock grazing and afforestation. Together these successful peatland restoration organisations are taking urgent action to conserve and restore our peatlands, contributing significantly to the UK’s climate and carbon sequestration targets. Sign up for the WaterLANDS UK newsletter to stay informed about what is happening at the UK Action Site https://bit.ly/3VTnI37 https://bit.ly/429aow6