Our community

One of the most effective ways to engage people in programmes of nature restoration is to allow them to both experience these habitats and become involved in their protection. Recognising this opportunity, YPP is developing a site-specific project with Denton Reserve; a site at the southern end of Nidderdale National Landscape with around 455Ha of moorland planned for restoration by YPP in 2024. This partnership provides an opportunity to improve access to peatlands for communities within and around Denton, and based on its well-networked and accessible position, will afford access to harder-to-reach groups and individuals who may otherwise be unable to spend time in these environments.

At the heart of ACE Bogs is the aim to engage the public in understanding the management of peatlands through active volunteering and involvement in a long-term citizen science project. ACE Bogs intends to equip volunteers with the skills to monitor key indicators of the health of peatlands over time. As well as this, the project aims to provide opportunities to volunteers to use what they have learned and observed to share their findings and analysis with others through a series of artist-led workshops to generate and disseminate creative campaign outputs.

Following successful appearances in Hawes and Settle, in the Yorkshire Dales, our Give Peat a Chance (GPaC) exhibition moved to Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley on the northwest edge of Bradford. In an exhibition that starts thousands of years ago and runs up to the present day, YPP looks at how peatlands formed, the wildlife that lives there, how human activity has affected our peatlands, and what we are doing to restore them. GPaC explores these beautiful, brooding landscapes thanks to generous funding from Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund and Pennine PeatLIFE.

Central to the exhibition is a “bog in a box”: a blanket bog recreated in a Perspex tank that will let people see how healthy peatland should look. The tank is combined with a series of interpretation panels to give visitors a deeper understanding of Yorkshire’s peatlands.

GPaC is free and can be found in the glasshouse at Cliffe Castle.

The vast majority of our restoration work is carried out by specialist contractors; it's hard manual labour, in remote locations and usually in the coldest, wettest months. It's difficult for us to safely offer volunteering opportunities in these circumstances.

We do have opportunities, however, in our monitoring work, specifically through our Eyes on the Bog programme. This provides a scientifically robust, repeatable, low tech, long-term monitoring initiative, using methodology created by the IUCN UK Peatland Programme. This standardised methodology enables individual peatland sites to be consistently monitored across the UK, creating a network of comparable sites.

We welcome volunteers - individually or in small groups - prepared to take on monitoring for specific sites across our operational area. We'll provide the equipment; you'll need to be happy on difficult terrain and able to get yourself there. If you'd like to find out more, please get in touch via the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust volunteering contact form.