Scotland needs an ambitious, coherent strategy on peatland restoration to reach this habitat’s full potential to tackle the nature & climate crisis. Scottish Government is leading the UK in investing in peatland restoration but this does not go far enough. https://www.rspb.org.uk/about-the-rspb/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/transformational-peatland-strategy-needed-to-tackle-scotlands-nature-and-climate-crisis/
New analysis by the RSPB has revealed the overall failure, UK wide, to restore our peatlands and the threat this poses to mitigating climate change and its impacts. Around 75% of Scotland’s peatland is degraded causing it to release the carbon stored within it.
Our analysis shows that the poor condition of UK peatlands results in the release of carbon equivalent to 5% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions every year – more than the annual emission from all HGVs on UK roads.
Damaging practices such as burning, overgrazing, commercial peat extraction, and tree planting on shallow peat soils continue to be allowed, meaning more peatland will need restoring in future.
If restoration efforts are not substantially increased across the four countries of the UK, then degraded peatlands will emit twice as much carbon as tree planting could capture if the Committee on Climate Change’s UK forestry targets aims were met.
Restoring our damaged peatlands should be a vital part of Scotland’s efforts to tackle the nature and climate crisis, helping to contribute to meeting Scotland’s net zero carbon target by 2045. https://arcg.is/0PT8qy 
You can follow @RSPBScotland.
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