The Floe Country Story

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

i was tasked with running a survey programme to establish whether the floe country contained anything of importance, anything that we should be concerned about losing. Richard assembled a team of scientists and took the train from london over 400 miles north to the tippy top of scotland. He documented all the wild life in the bog, carnivorous plants, dragon flies, water beetles, loons and golden plovers. It was tough going, but apart from the wet socks, richard remembers these long walks fondly, because you saw the bounce gently along.

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