Trees Are a Good Thing

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Public opinion began to turn against the tree planting. The government eventually agreed to protect about half of the peatlan that richard and his team had surveyed. And then a couple months later, they completely ended the tax scheme. It was a big wind for the bog and the conservationists fighting to protect it.

A few years back, 99pi producer Emmett FitzGerald brought us a beautiful story about peat bogs. Peat is essential for biodiversity and for the climate – it is really, really good at storing carbon. But like a lot of things we cover on the show, peat often goes unnoticed, in part because it is literally out of sight underground. We’ve noticed peat and carbon sequestration more and more in the news lately. Journalists have been brilliantly covering stories about the tree planting movement, private ownership of Scotland’s bogs, and the threat to peat in the Congo Basin. Couple that with more extreme weather happening in more places, we thought it would be a good idea to repeat this story.

For the Love of Peat