For peat’s sake

Published on Friday 2 December 2011 00:00

Helen McDade of the John Muir Trust calls for a national energy strategy to include not only sustainable energy generation but also energy conservation and efficiency (Letters, 30 November).

However, there is a further string to the bow of carbon emissions reduction and it is one which Scotland is particularly well placed to exploit: that of carbon sequestration.

Scottish Natural Heritage estimates that if all of Scotland’s peatlands were undamaged, they would store about 40 per cent of the carbon emitted to generate our domestic electricity, and that our peat soils presently contain nearly a third as much carbon as that held by all of Europe’s forests.

However, the predominant land use of our uplands for sport shooting, by requiring large numbers of red deer or burning of heather for grouse, at present minimises their carbon storage ability.

Moving away from this land use would allow degraded soils, denuded ground vegetation and absent woodlands to recover their carbon sequestrating potential, and may well be the cheapest route towards reducing our net carbon emissions, whilst providing other environmental benefits in terms of biodiversity, landscape, river quality and flood control.

A national energy strategy that includes all these routes towards the imperative of carbon emission reductions, based on research to quantify the relative benefits of all potential techniques, without fear of nor favour to established interest groups, is an urgent national requirement.

Roy Turnbull

Nethy Bridge

Inverness-shire

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Ron Greer

Friday, December 2, 2011 at 04:33 PM

Well Nabodican you and I share similar views on the windfarm farce-fiasco, but we differ on aspects of this one. The extensive heather moors now used by sectional sporting vested interests are not natural and they are not always ancient. Even taking away non native sheep results in a different vegetation complex and grazing by cattle has its own effects. The flora and fauna don't need a sporting estate, they've been doing their own thing for millenia. If you have not done so already I would suggest that you read Mountain and Moorlands by Prof Pearsall. If you think that what went on in the examples given of the slaughter of native biodiversity in Glen Garry in the mid 19th century was a positive aspect of sporting estate management, then I would feel sorry for you. In terms of carbon sequestraton then it does no matter whether the carbon is stored vertically in trees or horizontally in peat, but it could make a helluva difference to mankind and nature in the Highlands.

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tested

Friday, December 2, 2011 at 07:50 AM

I note that the author ,who is obviously opposed to a lucrative aspect of scottish tourism, fails to mention the destruction of peat bogs to accomodate windmills.

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nabodican

Friday, December 2, 2011 at 06:38 AM

Roy Turnbull's opposition to sport shooting is blinding him to the fact that a well managed hill does not have all the heather burned in one go, it is done sequentially in order to keep a variety of heather lengths and to encourage new growth. This supports a much larger variety of flora and fauna than if it were left alone . Carbon emissions are not a problem anyway and have minimal effect on our climate as we have witnessed over the last ten years or so despite the dire predictions of the warmists such as "Slioch" '!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Beachdair

Friday, December 2, 2011 at 01:43 AM

Well said, Mr Turnbull.

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