A quirky look at wildlife. To be taken with a pinch of salt, but with more than a grain of truth!

In spite of a prolonged drought and a debilitating heat wave, the garden centres near where I live are still doing a good trade. Sales of hoses, sprinklers and the like may be down, sales of lawnmowers too, but plants are still being trolleyed out, along with bags and bags of peat and multi-purpose composts, etc. Another item sprinting out of the garden centres and DIY stores at this time of year is charcoal for the BBQ. The sophisticated BBQs now on offer have to be seen to be believed. Very macho! However, the main concern is over the basic fuel used by many of them.

When buying charcoal, I suspect most people choose the quantity they want at a price that suits them, without much thought for the origins of the product. It is not apparent to most people that there might be a connection between their BBQ charcoal and the tsunami of Christmas 2004, and another, smaller one in the last couple of weeks. This is because the bulk of BBQ charcoal in past years has come from Indonesia, depleting the coastal mangroves that gave some protection against tidal waves and coastal erosion, not to mention the wildlife. Charcoal is also imported from South America.

Imported charcoal is often made from endangered tropical forests, especially from mangrove swamps found in shallow tropical salt waters. Over 50% of Indonesian charcoal is made from mangrove trees. It is said that there has been a 40-50% loss in total mangrove area over the past 50 years. Mangrove forests provide important nurseries for fish. They filter coastal pollution and are vital sources of timber and building materials for local communities. Pacific Islanders also harvest dyes from mangroves to treat textiles, nets and fish traps. The swamps have been shown to reduce wave energy by up to 75% over 200m of forest and were found to give significant protection to some coastal areas during the tsunami. There is now a considerable movement towards replanting and regenerating mangrove forests wherever possible.

All this is without mention of the environmental cost of transporting the charcoal halfway across the world for our convenience.

There is now a good supply of British charcoal to be found almost anywhere in the country, much of it provided by the local Wildlife Trusts and other woodland owners, who use coppiced timber to make charcoal. The sale of such products helps them to survive and maintain the woodlands in their care. There is now a big increase in the production of charcoal from coppiced waste hardwood such as oak, ash, hazel and hornbeam. Apart from the environmental advantages, there is the added benefit that it is more economical, it burns better and hotter and you do not need accelerants to get it to light.

To the uninitiated, coppicing can look like vandalism, but it is an essential part of keeping a woodland healthy and providing habitats for butterflies and space, light and air for plants such as bluebells, violets, primroses and wood anemones. Management by coppicing allows woodland flowers to flourish and act as food plants for pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies and other threatened species. It also creates new habitat for woodland birds such as the nightingale, blackcap and whitethroat, not to mention providing suitable habitats for the cute little dormouse. Coppiced woodlands have been reduced as a habitat by 95% since 1900, but such woodland is on the increase again, thankfully. But it will only be successful if local people use local charcoal and leave the lumpwood mangrove charcoal on the shelves — or better still, in the swamps!

In the current heat wave, peat is useless as a mulch or compost, as it won't hold water in a garden habitat and has no lasting nutrients. Before peat became the 'norm' for potting plants and seeds, old gardeners (young ones, too!) used to sterilise topsoil. When the 'new' peat came on the market they were scornful, much as some gardeners are now about new environmentally-friendly alternatives. Strange how history repeats itself.

It makes me sad to see peat still being sold after all the publicity and education work that was done in the 1980s and early 1990s. My volunteer group worked long and hard to try and stop the extraction of peat for garden use. This was part of the 'Plants Without Peat' campaign in conjunction with the National Peatlands Campaign Consortium in the early 90s. Hours were spent standing in garden centres and outside stores, explaining to bewildered customers why peat use was environmentally unfriendly and pointing out that there were excellent alternatives available. We were met with friendly interest from some people, scepticism from others and downright rudeness from a minority of know-alls!

Once you learn about peat, its formation, its fascinating history and its importance to wildlife and the environment, it is hard to understand why anyone would use it on their garden. It is easy, though, to see why companies continue to extract it and to sell it: money! As long as we buy, they will continue the practice. I remember a friend of mine asking a major peat producer some years ago how they justified peat extraction. He was told 'not to worry', as there were sufficient stocks for some 500 years! Peat forms at the rate of two millimetres a year, so in no way can it be regarded as a renewable resource. Once gone, it has gone forever. 500 years is a mere blink of an eye in the cycle of peat formation.

A peat bog which has not been interfered with acts in much the same way as a rainforest in controlling the water table and trapping carbon. In the past, when peat was cut by hand for fuel, it was not a 'burning issue', just a necessity for those who needed fuel or 'litter' for animal bedding. It had little impact on the bogs as a whole. It was the introduction of huge machinery in the 1960s and the marketing of peat for gardens which rang the death knell for many of these unique wildlife habitats.

A peat bog supports mosses, flowering plants, many invertebrates, insects, birds, rare plants such as bog rosemary, bog myrtle and bog asphodel and three different species of sundew. In wetter areas, you can find cross-leaved heath, cranberry and cottongrasses. Skylark, meadow pipit, dunlin and golden plover nest on the open bog, while in the drier parts nightjar, curlew and sparrowhawk find good pickings. Pools provide habitat for the aquatic stage of dragonflies, damselflies, large-heath butterflies and several species of moth. That is just a snapshot of the wildlife supported by a peat bog. Knowing that, how can anyone support peat extraction by continuing to buy it?

Considerable success came from the campaign, with major companies either abandoning peat-cutting altogether or reducing their output. However, peat is still cut and sold and many multi-purpose composts contain peat, though this is not always obvious from the packaging. The latest onslaught on peatlands comes from another human activity. It is the proposal to build over 200 large wind turbines on the North Lewis Moor on Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland. Most of the turbines would be sited in the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area. While wind farms are a favoured means of providing electricity in some circumstances, the choice of site is of paramount importance. Too many proposals have hugely detrimental effects on wildlife and habitat.

There are numerous alternatives to peat, such as compost from wood fibre, bracken, forest bark, spent hops, spent mushroom compost and coir (coconut fibre). Farmyard and chicken manure (from chicken farms), seaweed and rotted straw are also good alternatives and, of course, compost from your own kitchen and garden waste. There are also many local waste products being marketed as compost, such as granules of treated sewage sludge! What goes around comes around! Cocoa shells make an excellent mulch, but care should be taken if you have dogs, as they like the chocolate smell and taste and it can make them ill. A little adjustment in the method of use of all of these alternatives can produce surprisingly good results.

Everyone enjoys life in a different way. The summer of 2006 in the UK (so far!) is proving to be a scorcher. It was 95°F in the shade in my garden on the hottest day and 100°F on the patio. No need for a BBQ then, just slap some burgers and sausages on the slabs! Whether you do your gardening in the cool of the morning or have a BBQ in the heat of the evening, please remember those two burning issues of peat and charcoal and buy an environmentally-friendly alternative. Remember — small change — big difference.

Websailor's Wacky Wildlife World Archive

Websailor

27.07.06 Front Page

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