Exposed peat, Shackleton, Walshaw Moor Estate, May 2019
Biodiversity (the variety of animal and plant life) on the proposed wind farm site on Walshaw Moor Estate is highly protected. In theory.
In practice, over the last 12 years or so Walshaw Moor’s biodiversity has not been so protected – although Ban the Burn, Upper Calder Wildlife Network, the RSPB and other groups and individuals have done our best to make the conservation bodies use their powers effectively.
Now Calderdale Planning Authority’s Scoping Reponse states that if the wind farm were to go ahead, the resulting drying out of the peat and lowering of the water table could destroy the protected blanket bog habitat.
So how can we make sure that from now on the ‘competent authorities’ use their statutory biodiversity protection powers effectively, and prevent this biodiversity loss from happening? Particularly since a whole slew of new planning laws and regulations will have major impacts on biodiversity protection and restoration.
And why should we bother?
What are we talking about when we talk about biodiversity on Walshaw Moor?
Biodiversity (biological diversity) is the whole variety of living things that are supported by the moor’s peatland habitats – mainly blanket bog, Atlantic wet heathland and dry heath.
Blanket bog’s biodiversity includes a rich assemblage of peat-forming plants, red-listed birds (ie those threatened with extinction), and other species including mammals, amphians, reptiles and insects.
In an example of biological magic, the sphagnum mosses and other plants that grow in blanket bog and help keep its water table high also help to create new blanket bog, at a rate of about 1mm/year, as they die and are held under the bog in watery, airless conditions that prevent their decomposition and release of carbon to the air.
Once blanket bog is damaged through drying out, this cycle is stopped, with great biodiversity loss and destruction of the habitat.
In addition to these designated habitats, plants and birds, Walshaw Moor is also home to:
- Some local priority reptile and amphibian species and other species of local importance that have legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
- Bats
- Lower priority protected habitats, including long term pasture with internationally significant populations of CHEGD fungi.
Other protected species which may be present on the site include water voles, badgers, white claw crayfish, etc.
As part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Area of Conservation and Special Protection Area, in theory Walshaw Moor is protected by the legal requirement that Natural England must restore its designated habitats and species to favourable conservation status.
Protecting and restoring blanket bog biodiversity isn’t just a local issue.
Wetlands (such as Walshaw Moor blanket bog) are among the most biodiverse habitats in the world. They are also the most threatened, and are disappearing three times faster than forests.
They are essential for mitigating extreme weather events such as storms and floods, and there are compelling climate change reasons for restoring wetland biodiversity.
Upland peat restoration means taking measures to return the key habitats, primarily blanket bog, to a good ecological state. But the 2023 State of Nature Report (p 18) admits:
“There is still much to learn about the most effective [peatland] restoration approaches…More than 5,000 hectares (ha) of degraded peatland being restored each year. Despite this, only 25% of peatlands are assessed to be in good condition…
“Restoration and creation of carbon-rich habitats have clear co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as biodiversity, but realising these will require a step-change in the rate and scale of restoration.”
The Climate Change Committee has advised that 50% of upland peat should be restored to reduce the current emissions from peat.
The UK government’s 2023 Environment Improvement Plan is driven by legally binding targets and measures that include include an ambition to restore (or have under restoration) 280,000 ha of peatland by 2050.
How can we make sure that the ‘competent authorities’ use their statutory biodiversity protection powers effectively?
Despite Brexit, the European habitats and species protections remain in UK law.
This means: If the owner/manager of a protected site wants to carry out activities (such as agriculture, driven grouse shooting, or wind farm development), that may damage its protected special habitats and species, Natural England first has to carry out an Appropriate Assessment (aka Stage 2 Habitat Regulations Assessment).
“Binding EU case law makes clear that where a proposal could affect the ecological status of a protected site that is already in unfavourable condition, there will only be a limited possibility of an Appropriate Assessment consenting to it.”
For proposed developments on protected sites like the Walshaw Moor Wind Farm, the Local Planning Authority – not Natural England – is the ultimate decision maker for an Appropriate Assessment. But they are required by law to consult Natural England in carrying out the Appropriate Assessment process, to give Natural England’s advice considerable weight, and to provide cogent reasons if they depart from it. You can find more information about this here.
The relevant authority can only consent to the proposed activities or developments if the owner/manager can prove during the Appropriate Assessment that there is no reasonable scientific doubt that the activities would not damage the protected site.
Once an Appropriate Assessment permits the proposed operations, Natural England then has responsibility for enforcing adherence to the terms of the consented activities, in order to make sure that they don’t damage the site’s “special interest”.
That’s the biodiversity protection theory. In practice, Walshaw Moor’s biodiversity is not so protected.
“It’s like intensive farming when you go up there”
Ros Berrington, Hebden Bridge resident and member of Upper Calder Wildlife Network
The theoretically-protected moor’s biodiversity is seriously degraded, even after 12 years of legally binding conservation agreements between Walshaw Moor Estate Ltd and Natural England.
Walshaw Moor still bears the scars of biodiversity loss and damage for everyone to see. Just as it did in 2012, following two disastrous summer floods . That year, Ban the Burn learned to read the moor for signs of damage and degradation. Evidence jumped out at us of:
- heather burning,
- blanket bog drainage,
- track building,
- heavy vehicle damage,
- new grouse butt construction, and
- grouse grit (which is usually full of insecticide.)
The outcome was – and still is – bare, eroding peat and absence of sphagnum moss – a key species for peat formation. And a near-monoculture of heather.
Some of our elected representatives took note.
But the degraded blanket bog continued to lose its ability to slow the flow of run-off during rain storms, and to hold a high water table that allows the formation of new peat. The Upper Calder Valley public have suffered the consequences in further floods in 2015 and 2021.
Walshaw Moor looks like a monoculture instead of a species-rich mosaic of blanket bog and other peatland habitats
There’s a patch of Walshaw Moor where the blanket bog has been praised by a wandering fan of mosses as “very good, for West Yorkshire” – where, it has to be said, the norm is pretty rubbish. And a lot of the rest of the “not so good” blanket bog is still active, although not at the most healthy levels. But overall Walshaw Moor is in desperate need of restoration – and of being allowed to self-restore, as a lot of it would over time, if left alone.
These seem to be the main reasons for Walshaw Moor’s degradation:
A couple of hundred years of pollution from nearby industrial cities followed by post-World War 2 public subsidies for draining uplands for grazing. This century, Richard Bannister’s purchase of Walshaw Moor Estate and his mismanagement of it for intensive driven grouse shooting, which ended up in the courts when Natural England tried to stop it. This is all water under the bridge.
Natural England’s apparently unlawful 2012 Appropriate Assessment of Walshaw Moor Estate’s driven grouse shooting operations. This Assessment wrongly decided that that there was no reasonable scientific doubt that burning heather on blanket bog didn’t meet the legal test it would not damage the protected site.
Natural England’s subsequent, repeated failure to enforce the conditions of its 2012 Management Agreement with Walshaw Moor Estate, that resulted from the questionable Appropriate Assessment. This must have been at least in part because UK government funding cuts left Natural England seriously under-resourced – but partly also because of its emphasis on preserving heather for driven grouse shooting, which is associated with a serious decline in most upland species.
DEFRA’s uselessness and apparent ministerial conflict of interest, when grouse moor owner Richard Beynon was in charge as Secretary of State for Defra for many years. Was it allowable for a grouse moor owner with shared interests with the Moorland Association to have responsibility for overseeing Natural England’s work of enforcing EU Habitats and Wildlife Directives on Walshaw Moor Estate, when the Estate’s clear business aim was to intensify grouse shooting on the protected site?
DEFRA and Natural England’s arguably outdated blanket bog restoration strategy, which is limited to deep peat (>40cm) and geared to the interests of driven grouse shooting. For example, Natural England’s current peatland restoration measures in Walshaw Moor Estate’s Catchment Restoration Plan focus on existing deep peat areas.
Encouraging research in effective peat restoration methods – hope for Walshaw Moor!
York University is currently researching how to restore lost areas of deep peat – i.e., where only shallow layers (<40 cm) remain, which are periodically wet but have lost key functions for peat formation.
Relatedly, on Featherbed Moss in the Peak District, the National Trust has already shown that erosion gully blocking on more degraded and steeper peat slopes than usual still successfully raised the water table, restored hydrological function, improved vegetation diversity and reduced erosion; as well as reducing total and peak streamflow and improving water quality.
The 2023 State of Nature Report confirmed that,
“There is still much to learn about the most effective [peatland] restoration approaches. In the UK and England, the current monitoring and reporting of habitat condition is insufficient to assess progress towards statutory targets.”
Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd says the wind farm would end grouse shooting. And heather burning on the site would stop. Sounds like good news for the blanket bog – but is it?
Probably not. For one thing, blanket bog hydrology doesn’t depend on lines on a map that demarcate one patch of land from another. Presumably Bannister, the current Walshaw Moor Estate owner, will still have the sporting rights to the north west and south of the wind farm area, so grouse shooting is likely to continue on the 15 further Site of Special Scientific Interest land units in areas adjoining the wind farm site.
Blanket bog is mostly water, and water flows, so areas of peatland are highly connected. If one area of peat dries out, that affects the water table in other contiguous areas. (More info here – please see section headed ‘The proposed Calderdale Wind Farm site is only around half the area managed by Walshaw Moor Estate’.)
Second, drying out and eroding the peat is the main damage that driven grouse shooting inflicts on blanket bog, and the biodiversity it supports. The same is true of the main damage from windfarm construction, operation and decommissioning.
This is why we can’t see that it is possible to keep the conservation failures of the past 12 years separate from the proposed wind farm development. From the moor’s point of view, and from the continued flood risk consequences to the public, they are one and the same.
Why the degraded Walshaw Moor is ‘worth preserving’ in a climate emergency
Some people question whether Walshaw Moor is worth preserving anyway in a climate emergency, because its peat has degraded, sphagnum moss is largely dead and gone, with the result that it is now a carbon emitter and bare peat is washing away.
The short answer is:
Blanket bogs are a priority for UK biodiversity conservation – whether they are “active” or “degraded”. If they are degraded, the issue is how best to restore them to as active a state as possible. ‘Active’ blanket bog (Habitat 7130*) is defined as supporting a significant area of vegetation that is normally peat-forming.
Typically this includes the important peat-forming species, such as bog-mosses Sphagnum spp. and cottongrasses Eriophorum spp., or purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea in certain circumstances, together with heather Calluna vulgaris and other heather species.
This mix of blanket bog plant species means that even badly eroded sites may still be classed as ‘active’ if they otherwise support extensive areas of typical bog vegetation, and especially if the erosion gullies show signs of recolonisation.
Management Principles for the S Pennine Moors Site of Special Scientific Interest note that because of historic damage to the blanket bog habitat, management will:
“usually…need to focus on restoration but with the understanding that re-creation of an ecologically fully functioning bog habitat may not always be possible or may take a very long time. [But] the nutrient-poor and waterlogged conditions of blanket bogs that are not degraded and are in ‘favourable’ condition often means that very little management is actually needed and such sites should require little intervention.
“…On sites that have been degraded, it may be necessary to undertake further restoration works. It is also important to protect peat and peat-forming systems, as they can hold a significant store of carbon.”
There is a lot more carbon that Walshaw Moor peat still holds – and without blanket bog restoration and other conservation and protection measures on dry heath habitats, that massive reserve of stored carbon will be emitted. That is not going to help the climate emergency. On the contrary, ‘alter[ing] the peatland carbon store, with most anthropogenic pressures leading to carbon loss, will accelerate climate warming.”
Washing away more bare peat would be problematic for water treatment Many water treatment plants that remove dissolved organic carbon (DOC) already reach capacity in autumn and early winter.
“If increases in DOC concentration do continue, peaks in concentrations might exceed the capacity of existing water treatment facilities to continue to remove DOC, which may lead to the interruption of drinking water supply. Thus, considerable expenditure in new water treatment plants and increases in operational costs might be needed in areas that are reliant on peatland-derived water.”
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025592
Allowing continued degradation – and possible total loss – of Walshaw Moor’s blanket bog would worsen the flood risk in Upper Calder Valley. A number of studies have clearly shown the connection between blanket bog degradation, increased ‘flashability’ of the moors during rainstorms, and increased flooding in the valleys due to run-off from the moors.
If the wind farm were to go ahead, the drying out of the peat and lowering of the water table could actually destroy the blanket bog habitat
This is what Calderdale Council’s Biodiversity Scoping Report Response and the Calderdale Planning Authority Scoping Opinion say.
The blanket bog would change – first to dry heath, then to acid grassland and finally to mineral soil and bare rock, in an ongoing process of degradation and habitat destruction. As the peat dries out, it is subjected to oxidation and wind erosion, with larger scale damage in the longer term.
The proposed windfarm also increases flood risk from the impact of surface water runoff from turbine pads, tracks and roads. This can result in erosion of delicate peat down to mineral soil and rock.
Because of the prospect of such damage, an Appropriate Assessment of the wind farm proposal is required
The developers will have to prove through a Shadow Habitats Regulation Assessment that when proposed mitigations are taken into account, there is no reasonable scientific doubt that the wind farm will not damage the protected site’s integrity. (More info here about mitigations and Appropriate Assessment.)
According to this briefing note for local authority decision making, from a law firm to Local Planning Authorities about the implications of the Habitats Regulations (which govern the Appropriate Assessment process),
“Binding EU case law makes clear that where a proposal could affect the ecological status of a protected site that is already in unfavourable condition, there will only be a limited possibility of an Appropriate Assessment consenting to it.”
A whole slew of new planning laws and regulations will have major impacts on biodiversity
The UK government has recently introduced new planning regimes for:
- Onshore wind.
- Large scale developments in general (including onshore wind) that, since February 2024, are subject to new mandatory BIodiversity Net Gain legislation. Natural England describes it as “the biggest change to planning regulations in decades.”
- Development proposals that risk damaging protected sites that are in unfavourable condition – such as freshwater rivers, lakes and estuaries that are already harmed by so-called ‘nutrient pollution’ eg sewage and farm run off. Natural England’s current guidelines on this issue don’t mention blanket bog, but the principles that govern the planning process for developments on EU-protected sites that are in unfavourable condition must surely apply to all habitats, including blanket bog.
Natural England and Local Planning Authorities are centrally involved in all of them. But there seems to be some uncertainty about how the new planning rules and laws will work.
Getting our heads round these planning changes is probably a major campaign task now. Ban the Burn are working on this and aim to upload explainers asap.
If you can help with this, please let us know! (Via the contact form, below. In the Message bit, please say how you can help.)
The developers have said Walshaw Moor wind farm proposal is a test case, and I reckon it’s a test case for all these new planning laws and regulations. Whatever can they get away with here, on this most highly protected site, they’ll be able to get away with anywhere in England.
The proposed wind farm looks like further destruction of Walshaw Moor’s (highly protected) biodiversity for the owner’s profit
Although the profitability doesn’t seem to have worked out for Bannister’s industrial-scale driven grouse shooting business – while it’s pretty much guaranteed for the proposed wind farm, and whoever might end up owning the site it’s built on.
According to the National Farmers Union, landowners of wind farm sites can access annual lease agreements of £4k/£5K per installed megawatt that covers the lifetime of the development. That would amount to between £36.24m and £43.5m for the landowner, from the proposed Calderdale Wind Farm over its 30 year life.
Does likely damage from the proposed windfarm look like any improvement over the drying out and erosion of the blanket bog caused by heather buring for driven grouse shooting? We don’t think so.
A warning of what we’re up against in trying to hold public bodies to account for protecting and restoring Walshaw Moor’s biodiversity
This bit of history might look like water under the bridge – of no relevance now. We think it’s worth looking back, because the same over-stretched, under-resourced and conflicted public bodies are still in place. So let’s remind ourselves of what worked and what didn’t, in trying to hold these public bodies to account over the last 12 years.
Over 11 years Ban the Burn – together with Upper Calder Wildlife Network, Ban Bloodsports On Yorkshire’s Moors and the RSPB – repeatedly asked Natural England to investigate Walshaw Moor Estate’s breaches of its:
- Environmental Stewardship Agreement and related Consent to Operations on a Site of Special Scientific Interest
- 2017-42 Catchment Management Plan, that replaced the initial Consent after Walshaw Moor had refused to sign up to a voluntary ban on heather burning on blanket bog.
The UK government introduced the voluntary ban as a result of the RSPB and Ban the Burn initiating a long-drawn out EU Commission legal case. The legal case clobbered Defra and the UK government for not enforcing EU wildlife and habitats protection laws on Walshaw Moor Estate and many other protected uplands. When the voluntary ban failed, the UK government was forced to introduce legislation to prevent the unlicensed burning of heather and other vegetation on deep peat (over 40cm depth) in Sites of Special Scientific Interest that are also Special Protection Areas & Special Conservation Areas. In other words, if you got a licence, you could still burn. We think the legislation was too little, too late. But it was something. A recent (April 2024) RSPB study found a 73% reduction in the burned area in England in 2021/22, compared to the average of the four previous years – suggesting that the 2021 regulation to reduce burning over peat soils has been somewhat successful.
But the Catchment Restoration Plan (that replaced the previous Consent, as a result of Walshaw Moor Estate’s refusal to sign the voluntary ban on heather burning) has not been monitored by Natural England. They’ve admitted this in response to Freedom of Informatin requests. Relatedly, Walshaw Moor Estate doesn’t seem to have complied with the conditions of either of the agreements with Natural England, or met their biodiversity conservation goals:
- rewet and restore damaged blanket bog and wet heath habitats (funded by £millions of public subsidies)
- prevent further damage from contentious ‘consented’ operations for farming and driven grouse shooting
As a result, by 2023 Ban the Burn was forced to conclude that Natural England’s situation was helpless.
How likely is that to change now?
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