Swinton vegetation survey volunteers © Dom Hinchley
Get involved
Fund our work
It costs around £1 million a year just to keep us operational, and that’s before any restoration work starts. If you’d like to support our work, every little helps:
Donate now
Heading towards lower monitoring plots July 2024 © Juliet Klottrup
Volunteering
Help us restore Yorkshire's bogs...
Our restoration work is carried out by specialist contractors but you can help us restore Yorkshire's bogs through monitoring.
Eyes on the Bog © Jenny Sharman
Eyes on the Bog
Eyes on the Bog involves a suite of methods using simple techniques and affordable technology to capture information from a range of metrics which are important in understanding peatland health. This involves individuals or groups “adopting a plot” and collecting data that builds up over time to help create a UK wide picture of peat health.
Using trigonometry to set out a the corners of a monitoring plot © Lyndon Marquis
Nature for Climate monitoring
An important element of the Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme is that it funds restoration-site monitoring from the very start of the process. This gives us valuable baseline data that enables us to understand how our work is affecting the peatlands we are restoring. Collecting this vital data is labour intensive and we’re grateful for all the help we can get – come and join our teams carrying out monitoring on site.
If you would like to find out more about our volunteering opportunities
Commercial peat extraction © Emma Goodyer
Go peat free in your garden
There has been no commercial peat extraction in Yorkshire since 2006, but all peat comes from somewhere and peat everywhere is important. On the UK mainland, peat is still extracted for bagged compost in Somerset and in Dumfries and Galloway. 60% of the peat used in UK compost is imported – we’re offshoring our responsibility to overseas bogs. One of the best things you can do for peatlands everywhere is to go peat-free in your garden. If your bagged compost or your plants are not explicitly labelled peat-free, they will contain peat. Please only buy products that are labelled peat-free and let your retailer know why you have chosen them; it's vital they understand that there is marketplace for peat-free products.
Greenhouse gas monitoring plot above Bishopdale © Dom Hinchley
Placements
We do not have capacity to offer unfunded placements. If you have funding for a placement, please contact us to discuss. If your interest is in fieldwork, please note that the ground-nesting bird and driven grouse seasons mean that our fieldwork occurs from November to March; regardless of funding, we cannot offer fieldwork outside that window.
Monitoring bog pools © Gautier Nicoli
Research projects
We welcome research projects and have supported students and researchers of all levels to access peatlands, carry out research and use our monitoring data. Yorkshire Peat Partnership is not usually able to provide funding (including additional or match) for research and our time is often overstretched but we are keen to support where we can. We regularly visit our monitoring sites and can take researchers to these sites with us or organise access to sites on your behalf. We particularly welcome anyone interested in analysing the large data sets we collect, for example our extensive water tables and vegetation monitoring span over 20 sites across North Yorkshire.