Tessa Levens is one of our Project Managers and first started working on National Trust owned Cray Moss, in Yorkshire Dales National Park, over a decade ago.

“It’s been really heart-warming to see the difference that NfC funding is making on sites like Cray Moss – the bog is humming with life now. The Restoration grants have allowed us to double our efforts over previous years while the Discovery grants have enabled us to plan restoration for specific sites for when shovel-ready funding becomes available. Having this kind of commitment from Government creates a climate where private finance can feel confident investing in restoration.”

The NfC funding directly targets climate change - on the National Trust’s estate alone, we have prevented a potential 132,126 tonnes of carbon emissions over 50 years – but for us as a Wildlife Trust, the biodiversity benefits are just as important. We’ve watched Sphagnum gradually creeping up over the dams we’ve installed; heard the moors come alive with song as breeding birds return to sites from which they were absent; felt the bog quake beneath our feet as the water table has risen; marvelled at the oddly metallic rustle of dragonfly wings as they’ve colonised newly formed pools. All this has been made possible with NfC and the match funding it unlocks.

Shelley Rhodes is the Local Partnerships Coordinator, Peatland Restoration, for the National Trust’s Upper Wharfedale Estate.

“Our ultimate ambition is that bare peat on our fells will be a thing of the past, instead replacing it with thriving habitats that are hydrologically stable, full of biodiversity, and supporting sustainable farming practices. 

“It's important for the National Trust that we're undertaking this kind of work on a regular basis now, and we have an ambitious target to create or restore over 25,000 hectares of new priority habitat by 2025."

By the end of our 2023/2024 restoration season, we had collaborated with multiple partners to bring over 2,900 ha of peatland into restoration management across the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks with NfC funding. To achieve this, we:

• Walked 686 km to survey and monitor these sites - that's the distance by road from Exmoor in southwest England to Forsinard Flows in northeast Scotland.             
• Blocked 26 km of drainage and erosion channels
• Installed 3,500 dams and bunds
• Planted 863,000 plug plants to help re-establish bog vegetation

All of this work means NfC will prevent almost 790,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from peatlands across North Yorkshire over the next 50 years. This funding stream has massively helped to progress work right across the Great North Bog.