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Dowrog Common Nature Reserve Peatland Restoration

Nathan Walton

A £5m national peatland restoration project is about to undertake an important piece of work on Dowrog Common in Pembrokeshire – one of the seven LIFEquake sites. Dowrog Common Nature Reserve, located outside of St Davids, is a 101 hectare Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and part of the North Pembrokeshire Commons SAC, managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

The reserve is a focus of the EU funded LIFE project called LIFEquake which is supported by Welsh Government and delivered in Pembrokeshire as a partnership between Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, National Trust and Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. 

Peatland is the most valuable land resource in Wales as it stores 30% of land-based carbon. Covering about 4% of Wales, it is estimated that 90% of Welsh peatland is in a deteriorating condition and emitting greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change.

The LIFEquake project aims to restore peatland, quaking bogs and their wider supporting wetland landscapes to favourable conservation status. Quaking bogs – so called because when conditions are right the ground ‘quakes’ underfoot.
To manage the habitat at Dowrog Common, LIFEquake and project partners have already installed fencing which will bring back historic grazing of livestock on the site. Grazing helps to maintain the right levels of vegetation on wetland sites which allow the important “bog building” plants and mosses to thrive.

The next project action taking place at Dowrog Common will be the scraping of areas dominated by unwanted surface vegetation and superficial enriched peat, allowing the redevelopment of quaking bog in the shallow pools that are left behind. These “scrapes” effectively mimic the conditions which have led to the development of quaking bogs in the past in other parts of Wales.

LIFEquake recently revisited Rhos Goch in Powys, another of the project sites where scrapes have taken place. Six months after the project action began there has been significant recovery of the plants and mosses – including bladderwort and Nodding Bur Marigold, something not seen on that site for 30 years.
The work will commence in early November and is expected to be completed in just a few weeks.

For updates on the work and the recovery of the Dowrog Common habitat, please follow LIFEquake via the project website Natural Resources Wales / LIFE Quaking Bogs and on their social media @LIFE Quaking Bogs.

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