Our work at Snaizeholme

Here’s how our work to restore nature in the Yorkshire Dales is holding back enough flood water to fill two Olympic swimming pools an hour.

This is Snaizeholme, a valley in the Yorkshire Dales where we’re planting trees, maintaining upland meadows and restoring peat bogs, all to create a nature-rich landscape in a changing climate.

Thanks to new research from the University of Leeds, we now know how this work will pay off in the future.

A paper published recently by the British Ecological Society modelled how our woodland creation plans will impact river flows and water storage during extreme storm events, which are more likely to happen as the climate changes.

The result? Re-wetting peatland, planting trees and recreating natural, bendy river channels could reduce peak flows of water by 5% during major storm events. That may not sound like much, but a 5% reduction is the equivalent of Snaizeholme holding back up to five million litres of water per hour during a storm. Enough water to fill two Olympic swimming pools per hour.

The best part? This could be achieved without disturbing the soils under Snaizeholme that already store vast amounts of carbon.

A separate study at the site found that by mapping out the soils and habitats, we’ve been able to plant trees where they won’t disturb carbon-rich soils and can complement carbon sequestration across the valley. We’ve also done this while retaining livestock in the landscape. The cows graze the valley bottom and keep it open for wildflowers, showing that habitat creation, climate resilience and farming can all happen alongside each other.

Our work at Snaizeholme is ongoing, and right now we have an opportunity to bring even more of the valley under our care. To find out more and see how you can support us at Snaizeholme, head to our website.