ChrisJC said:
2xw said:
They're likely to end up as huge sources of carbon to the fluvial system and the atmosphere and huge risks for wildfire.
Leaving them is similar to leaving toxic waste instead of clearing it up. In my professional opinion many of them are beyond the point of being able to repair themselves
Pretty much all the places I have ever seen that have been abandoned have seen a remarkable takeover by nature in very short order!
Surely the heather would grow until it is outcompeted by taller species etc, until it's forested again?
Is there an example of such a landscape being abandoned and it not recovering of its own accord?
Chris.
The natural succession of heather is that it becomes tall and rank, and as the land gets wetter the heather falls over and becomes a matrix for growth of sphagnum.
Unfortunately because many moorlands (that should be blanket bog) were drained with dug channels (this is mostly not a grouse moor thing, but due to post-war pressures to convert land for agricultural use) the land will stay dry.
This increases the risk of wildfire which sets things back and consequently if you want degraded moorland to come back to a beneficial blanket bog you need a campaign of ditch blocking, and, sometimes management of Calluna overdominance (but not via burning it!). In the most degraded peatlands it requires liming, seeding with lowland grass, gully blocking, stabilisation with geotextiles and brash spreading.
For some examples of ecosystems that definitely would not have/haven't been reinvigorated on their own, visit Moorhouse in Teesdale, the top of Kinder Scout, most of the Eastern Moors in the Peak, most of the land the Yorkshire Peat Partnership is working on, Knockfin Heights in Scotland, in fact have a look on Google earth at any area with bare peat and I can guarantee you that needs a restoration.
Some people use examples of slag heaps with plants on them etc, but this isn't really an example of nature recovering - it's an example of nature surviving.
Duckditch, there is no doubt some papers that present evidence of benefits from shoot management and pheasant stocking for woodland ecology. That's because if you ask a scientist a question you're likely to get three answers. Have a gander at the GWCT site.
The problem with all of these discussions on land management is that we must first decide what we want from the land.
Do we want upland heath, moor, and bog to provide clean water and carbon sequestration benefits? Then we need to rewet them and embark on peatland restoration programmes. This doesn't necessarily exclude hunting, but probably does exclude driven grouse.
Do we want our uplands peatlands to trend to their "natural" successional state, which appears to be birch scrub followed by eventual forest? Fine, but we'd probably have to take radical actions to offset the carbon losses this would entail - perhaps completely banning cars and aeroplanes.
I suppose there's also the option of keeping grouse moors as they are, which entails us paying higher water bills and offsetting the other associated negatives. In which case dig ditches and burn away!
Other options include true "rewilding" (just leaving them) which would result in wildfire, carbon loss and heather monocultures.
If we were really imaginative we could convert it to productive land and lead the world in cranberry production!
