Manx Peat Partnership

Bog Asphodel flowers are turning from yellow to orange as they fruit, but they still look beautiful ☺️ They grow in wet, acidic conditions and were once thought to cause brittle bones in livestock. The plants can cause problems for lambs, however other plants are usually eaten in preference 🐏

The purple heathered hills are awash with flowers at the moment ☺️Calluna vulgaris is the most common heather species found on the #isleofman but you can also see bell heather and cross-leaved heath 💜

Hands up if you love peatlands!💚

We've started putting up signs at our #peatland restoration sites☺️ Check out these ones near Black Hut 👀 More will be installed over the next few weeks and you can click on the QR code to find out what's going on 💚

An abundance of berries and bees on Beinn-y-Phott today 🐝 Blaeberries and crowberries are out and the bumblebees are loving the cross-leaved heath 💜

This bog asphodel plant is tucked into a damp, sheltered area behind a coir log, which was previously bare #peat 😍 It's the only one at the moment, but the cottongrass and sphagnum are spreading and creating conditions suitable for other bog species to become established 😊🌿

Who doesn't love a sundew? 😍 These carnivorous plants are in flower at the moment, but you have to look closely, they're very small! Spikey yellow-sedge are also fruiting on our #peat restoration sites 😀

Many upland species are now in full summer mode, despite the weather not feeling particularly warm! Bell heather is in bloom, providing nectar for many invertebrates 🐝🦋, blaeberries are out 😋 and so was an emperor moth caterpillar 🐛💚

Before and after photos are a great way of assessing how our work is going. This type of monitoring will continue over the next few years, but already we can see massive changes 😃 The digger work on this site only started in February this year and just look at the difference now!🌿🌱

A carpet of sphagnum moss and marsh violet on one of our planned #peat restoration sites 😍 This site has some really nice wet habitat but also areas of degraded, eroding peat. To preserve the sphagnum carpet (and prevent the digger getting stuck😉) the work on this site will be done by hand 💪

It depends on the slope. We make sure that the water flowing over the dam falls into water dammed below, to reduce the chance of erosion 😊

We were joined at our Black Hut restoration site by John Moss of Manx Radio 😊
www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of...

New Funding Awarded to Develop Lost Peatlands Connections Project A total of £263,309 in funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund has been awarded to the Lost Peatlands Connections project which will build on the

First piece about the new #LostPeatlands project. If those on the peatlands feed or working on other conservation projects could give it a repost it would be much appreciated!

If you’ve got things you want to see us develop, deliver or evidence, let us know.

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The damming of a drainage channel, step by step ☺️ These dams will raise the water table in the surrounding peat, keeping it nice and wet 💦 They also create shallow pools which will benefit wildlife 🐦🦟

What a glorious sight at our Black Hut restoration area 😍 The fluffy seed heads of common cottongrass are covering the coir netting in 'summer snow' 🌱This area of bare peat is starting to revegetate ☺️

What are you mowing?

The hills are loving this weather of sunshine and showers 😊 Shallow pools on one of our #peat restoration sites are full of sphagnum moss and the sundews are out, ready to catch any unsuspecting invertebrates 🦟🕷😋

Dog's sick slime mould 🤢found on Beinn-y-Phott last autumn🧐 Slime mould amoeba group together when their food is in short supply or when they want to reproduce. This blob is known as a plasmodium and acts like a single organism, moving around in search of food 🍔

Polytrichum (haircap moss) capsules are starting to emerge from their calyptrae, ready to release their spores 🌱These have caught the early morning moisture and are glinting in the sunlight ☺️

Is it a sign of too much time alone in the hills when you start seeing faces in the peat hags? Asking for a friend 😉

The sphagnum moss is loving this wet weather 💦💚 Small pools of water have been trapped behind coir logs, creating the perfect conditions for aquatic species. Hummock-forming species, such as sphagnum papillosum, are poking through the coir netting, which provides shelter from extremes of weather ☀️🌧❄️

Heath milkwort is abundant on Mullagh Ouyr at the moment. These beautiful purple/blue flowers💠 are easy to miss, but look closely and you'll see them everywhere 🤩

The hare's tail cotton grass is showing its full fluffiness at the old turbary site on Beinn-y-Phott at the moment ☺️The blaeberries are starting to flower, the birds are singing🐦 and the lambs baa-ing 🐑All we need now is some rain to keep the sphagnum happy,💦🌱

The hills are alive with spring colours and birdsong at the moment 🐦Vibrant red blaeberry shoots, green fir clubmoss and fluffy white cottongrass 💚 This diversity of upland vegetation supports a number of rare bird species and is what makes our hills so special 😊

These unusual hummocks were found in an area with fairly short vegetation. They appear to be comprised of sphagnum and haircap moss, with a topping of heather and lichen. Several sphagnum species naturally form hummocks, but they don't normally look quite like this 🧐

New shoots of blaeberry growing through coir netting 😍Nets, along with heather brash, are used to cover areas of bare peat and help them to re-vegetate. This net was installed on Mullagh Ouyr last year by a group of volunteers, and is already starting to blend in to the surrounding vegetation 🌱

We ordered great weather for our 'Power to the Peatlands' event this morning ☀️😊 The team managed to cover the bare peat with heather brash and coir netting, protecting it from the weather and helping vegetation to grow🌱

Shallow peaty pools have been created behind coir logs at our restoration site😊 and common cottongrass and #sphagnum moss🌱 are starting to colonise the bare #peat. These shallow pools also provide a nice breeding habitat for invertebrates, such as craneflies, which will feed upland breeding birds 🐦

It was great to be joined by Conservation Biology and Ecology student, Eliott, today for some peatland work🌱 It was a deceptively chilly but lovely day on Snaefell, and we surveyed peat hags, spread heather brash and installed coir netting😊

Today we had to channel our inner Grinch and remove these planted Christmas trees🎄from a #peatland area. Planting these may seem like a good idea, but they are unlikely to survive and Santa probably won't even find them🎅 Non-native species are best kept in the garden 🙏😊