Читать книгу The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey онлайн

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However, paving the Pennine Way was only part of the story. The next phase saw the revegetation of the surrounding ground, which had begun in earnest with the management project in the 1990s. In 2003, an initiative was launched called Moors for the Future, an ambitious partnership of public and private bodies that before long ran one of the biggest moorland conservation projects in Europe. Such was its success that in 2015 the partnership received the largest ever award made by the European Union to a UK-based nature conservation project – the small matter of €16 million (over £12 million) for its MoorLIFE 2020 project. It began by installing new hilltop fencing to control sheep numbers and prevent overgrazing, then launching fire awareness campaigns, since over 400 fires have been recorded on the national park’s moors since 1982, many with devastating consequences for the moorland vegetation. Around 10,000 tiny dams were constructed to prevent damaging surface run-off (a technique known as gully blocking), and systematic fertilisation and reseeding began. In addition, over 750,000 plugs of native moorland plants were planted (by hand!) and sphagnum moss was reintroduced to begin the long process of restoring the blanket bog and stabilising the peat.