Lesne’s Earwig has been planting moss in the Peak District.

These pachydermous hills

Sit in fortitude above the follies at their feet

Ever present in their thin and velvet skin

Each bone, each slump and slip

Self evident. They itch.

Scarred by disregard and misplaced affection

Scabbed by overgrowth of heather, drying into dust

Till Kate comes with her mower

To scratch the pleasant beasts

Damn their gullies, stop their weeping sores

And we, a flock of ox-peckers

Tiny, but well-intentioned

Not removing but implanting

Emerald strands of moisture…

The ancient pachyderms

Stand ready to absorb.

***

13 million tonnes of carbon are stored in the peat soil of the Peak  District. Peat  is dried by excessive drainage, by burning to encourage a monoculture of heather for grouse shooting.By overgrazing.By pollution which has killed the sphagnum moss

When peat bogs dry the carbon is released into the atmosphere.Biodiversity is reduced. The landscape is degraded.Water becomes unsuitable for drinking. And flash floods occur.

Cutting down on all the negatives, reducing the heather coverage and planting sphagnum to restore the bogs, allows the land to function as it should.