Praise for Powys peatland project

16 Oct 2015 10:39 AM

Deputy Minister for Farming and Food, Rebecca Evans, visited Aberhosan yesterday to see how a project funded through the Nature Fund is helping to demonstrate good natural resource management and the lasting public benefits this can deliver.

Run by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife trust, the Pumlumon Peatland Push project was recently awarded £59,000 from the Welsh Government’s Nature Fund and is part of a wider initiative called the Pumlumon Living Landscape project.

The Pumlumon Living Landscape region of the Cambrians supports the largest watershed in Wales and is the source of the nationally important Wye, Severn, and Rheidol rivers. By revitalising Pumlumon’s important habitats and local communities, this exemplar project aims to pioneer a sustainable upland economy for Wales based on the delivery of key ecosystem services.

The Deputy Minister said:

“Projects such as the Peatland Push, and the wider Living Landscape programme, can really showcase the wider benefits our landscape can bring for the whole community, such as carbon sequestration, water retention, flood risk alleviation, and restoration of heather habitat.

“The visit to Pumlumon was an opportunity to further explore the development of a market - and the level of interest from businesses - in terms of payment for the ecosystems services that our upland farmers can provide.

“The Nature Fund generated wide interest from many farmer led groups to undertake practical activities targeting improvements in our natural resources, particularly with regards to biodiversity, and I am keen to see this enthusiasm carried forward into the new Rural Development Programme (RDP).

“We will shortly be announcing more detailed information regarding the RDP which will include opportunities for further collaborative work to help achieve improvements to natural resources at a landscape scale.”

The Nature Fund was announced in 2013 to help tackle the continued decline of biodiversity across Wales, and deliver a number of wider community benefits.

For the long-term resilience of our upland communities, wider economy and our environment we aim to improve our natural assets and that includes water, soil and biodiversity. Across the board the Nature Fund has engaged many farmers in helping to deliver biodiversity and community benefits as well as improving farmer businesses.

Montgomeryshire Wildlife trust has been running the Pumlumon Living Landscape partnership since 2005 and currently has 13 active projects (over 1258ha of the Cambrian Mountains) engaged in sustainable land management.

The Welsh Government has committed to taking action to bring all Welsh peatlands into restoration management by 2020.