the dark magic of peat

Benbecula is the opposite of an island.

If you climb to the top of Rueval, the only hill, the view spread in front of you is watery. Peaty lochans and salt-water inlets loosely patched with areas of flat peatland and threaded through by the road that connects Benbecula, via causeways to the islands of North and South Uist. Most days in the week that I visit even the low slopes of Rueval are veiled in cloud and the strips of water, beach, machair and peatbog are layered in a watercolour blur.

Peat bogs have magical properties

Trudging across a peatbog it’s easy to misjudge water for land and end up with a bootful of thick brown water. But under the moss and bullrushes sit a thousand years of dense chocolate brown treasure. Peatbogs have magical properties aside from those granted them in tales of mysterious marsh lights or mischievous fairies. A single hectare of healthy peatland can store up to 70 tonnes of carbon per year, leading to the stunning statistic that although they make up only 3% of the earth’s surface the world’s peat bogs account for 30% of the planet’s carbon storage more than all the global forests combined.

Peat - a deep time recipe

Peat is compressed vegetation built up over hundreds of years as the leafy top layer partly decomposes in an oxygen deprived, waterlogged environment trapping carbon underground in a uniquely efficient manner. As well as being a carbon sink, peatland plants improve water quality by filtering out zinc and copper from the water supply. This permanently damp underlay releases water slowly into lower ground reducing the risk of flooding and mitigates the spread of brush fire on moorland. Bogs are biodiversity hot spots - home to acid loving low lying plants including several rare carnivorous species and mosses and a rich habitat for insects and small mammals including the endangered water vole.

 Peatlands under threat

Unfortunately, up to 80% of the UK’s Peatlands have already been drained for forestry, development, or peat extraction. Degraded peat robbed of its watery cloak becomes a net emitter of carbon as organic matter exposed to air forms carbon dioxide which is then released into the atmosphere. Peat in this desiccated state provides additional fuel for moorland fires with devastating results for animal and plant life as well as further erosion of the lower layers of peat. Scotland has over 1.7 million hectares of peatlands and its preservation in a healthy state is a vital part of the Scottish Executive’s carbon reduction strategy. They have pledged to restore 250,000 hectares of damaged peatland by 2030 and have put in place a system of grants to enable landowners to take an active part in improving this important habitat.

Peat cutting still exists but it’s a backbreaking way to keep warm.

On the drive to Benbecula from the ferry terminal on North Uist, I pass several houses with peat stacks in the garden. Many of them are covered with plastic fertiliser sacks but some are stacked in herringbone and brick patterns exposed to the drying wind. Harvesting peat for fuel has been a tradition here, as elsewhere in the Highlands and Islands, for centuries. Meg Pier’s interview with Benbecula local Donald MacPhee really gets under the skin of just how physical peat cutting gets! Peat is cut by hand from an area of peatbog owned by a particular family, with a tairsgear, a heavy right angled spade. The top vegetative layer is first ‘turfed’, sliced off, and upturned into the bottom of the peat cutting trench to form the next layer of peat. Then the dense, dark sods of waterlogged peat were sliced off vertically and expertly flicked to a waiting catcher whose job it was to build the peat stack or fill a wheelbarrow if the peat was to be dried offsite. The peat once stacked has be air-dried for a minimum of three months until all the moisture has evaporated, and it can be burned as fuel. It is backbreaking work that requires teamwork, muscle, and patience a commitment difficult to balance with the demands of modern life and of limited use in homes without traditional ranges or open fires.

Islanders doing it for themselves

Although picturesque the remote otherness of the Outer Hebrides means they fail to make the priority list for governments in either Westminster of Edinburgh, and fuel poverty is a real concern here. More than 110,000 homes on the Uists are not on the main gas grid and depend on oil tankered in from the mainland for their heating. The price of oil, unlike that of gas or electricity has remained unregulated during the recent energy crisis, and consumers often lack a choice of provider. This has led to a resurgence in the use of peat as fuel to supplement other forms of heating.  Peat is not the only alternative to oil. The Uist landscape is studded with wind turbines many of them owned by the local communities among which they stand. Uistwind on North Uist and Loch Carnan Community Windfarm on South Uist not only provide electricity to local homes but generate income for community projects through the sale of electricity to the National Grid. Here is tangible evidence of the resilience and determination of local communities to drive change where central government has been slow to act.

 The real problem with peat is in our own backyards!

Peat, left to its own devices eventually becomes coal and in both forms it is a fossil fuel of limited supply. But the local harvesting of small amounts of peat for personal use in places like Benbecula are not the main issue. Most peat is extracted for use in domestic and commercial horticulture and despite its investment in peatland restoration, the Scottish Executive only started a consultation on the banning of peat for sale in February 2023 although environmental organisations such as Garden Organic have been lobbying for this for some time. Some commercial growers of ericaceous (acid loving) plants argue that a peat content of at least 40% in growing mixes is necessary for healthy and commercially viable plant production and that none of the peat substitutes currently available meet this need. Whisky distillers using peat malted barley to give their products their distinctive smoky flavour worry that an outright ban will rob the Scottish whisky industry of its unique appeal. They argue that the benefits they bring to local communities in terms of direct employment, tourist dollars and whisky’s special place in the commercial and cultural life of Scotland should gain them immunity from any ban. In fact, the whisky industry is responsible for only 1% of current peat extraction and horticulture and ill-advised forestry planting schemes are by far the bigger target. Peat alternatives such as coir are popular with the new generation of ‘lockdown’ gardeners who embrace alternative compost products from suppliers like For Peat’s Sake. Coir, made from husks of coconut has its own carbon footprint in terms of transport emissions and botanists worry that an increase in imports might risk the inadvertent arrival of non-native pests.

Growing a sustainable energy harvest

On Benbecula as elsewhere the layers of conflict over peat run deep, but those herringboned peat stacks are a store of knowledge as well of fuel. Other solutions, in the form of wind turbines are on the literal horizon and both represent the expertise we need to build energy security into our future.

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