§ Lord Beaumont of Whitleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, further to the statement of Baroness Hayman on 17 November (H.L. Deb., col. 366) and the subsequent letter of the Wildlife Trusts of 10 December, they still consider that "parts of Thorn and Hatfield Moors have been included as candidates for Special Areas of Conservation", and that "it is only by continuing extraction to groundwater level that bogs will be re-established allowing the regeneration of the conservation interest."
§ Baroness HaymanI can confirm that part of Thorne Moors is a candidate Special Area of Conservation.
In my statement, I referred to the need to bring the level of peat close to the groundwater level to achieve the regeneration of conservation interest within peatbogs affected by commercial peat extraction. I was specifically referring to the water level within the peat mass (often termed the "groundwater mound" by hydrologists), and not the regional groundwater table. As the letter from the Wildlife Trusts correctly points out, the former is derived almost entirely from precipitation and is generally very low in nutrients. For this reason, the peat industry are required to leave a suitable depth of well humified peat (generally half a metre) above the mineral substrate to prevent nutrient enrichment from the underlying strata.