D&S Times Farming Matters: Getting to grips with gripping

The drainage system was heavily promoted by Ministry of Agriculture officials from the 60s to the 80s and grants of up to 70pc were given to landowners to install the grips - narrow drainage ditches - to dry out moorland.

The wisdom of the day said it would make the land more suitable for sheep and grouse.

Today MAFF is giving grants for landowners to plug the grips, which have been blamed for a much faster run-off of rainwater, causing flash floods in the valleys.

Erosion has also caused some of the grips to create huge craters and channels, with lambs lost in deep gullies, and cause peat erosion.

Mr Wallace played host to a visit by North Yorkshire Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group on Monday of last week.

Since moving to Cam Farm, at Oughtershaw, high above Buckden, he has entered all the land into the countryside stewardship scheme. He is also taking part in the pilot Upper Wharfedale best practice project which involves a number of agencies working with landowners to block grips.

Mr Wallace explained that some 17 sq km had been gripped on the farm, concentrated on the blanket bog of Oughtershaw Moss. With the grips 20m apart, he estimated there was 96km to be blocked on the farm.

"We have blocked about 30km already by scraping off peat in the surrounding ground and plugging it into the grips," he said. "I could not do any of this without the help of FWAG and the Environment Agency but, basically, if I can get help from anyone I will go to them."

Apart from the gripping work, he plans to develop the farmhouse and bed and breakfast.

The farm lies three miles off the road from Hawes to Kettlewell and has the Pennine Way and Dales Way running through it.

Mr Wallace is also planting 10,000 trees in ten areas and more than 7km of fencing. Some of the new woodland is specifically designed to attract black grouse back to the land.

He plans to restore 1,348 metres of the estimated 4.5km of dry stone wall on the farm over the next ten years and is erecting 3km of sheep fencing.

Grazing is let to an adjoining farm, but Mr Wallace controls the stocking rates, at present down to one ewe per hectare with grazing allowed only between May and mid-August.

FWAG's visit was to look at moorland gripping and hear about the Upper Wharfedale best practice project.

Mr Ivan Ingles, project officer from the Environment Agency, explained that the scheme was run with European objective 5b funding. Just over £500,000 was available, of which only a small amount had been spent blocking moorland grips. "We would be very happy to use more of the money on that and the deadline for it to be used is December 2001," he said. To be sure to qualify, landowners and farmers would have to apply before June next year.

Although moorland gripping was believed to have increased the speed of the rise and fall of the Upper River Wharfe there was no actual scientific evidence.

One of the key points which came out of the discussion was that the grip blocking work in upper Wharfedale was justified from the point of view of restoration of the moorland habitat and banket bog vegetation and reducing erosion and silt movement, but that the effects on the flow of the Wharfe were uncertain.

The best practice project has now established a number of water measuring recorders whose data is just being collected for analysis.

One spokesman was adamant that, although the effect of gripping might be noticed close by, there was no impact at all on lower reaches of rivers. A neighbour of Mr Wallace said that, in both December and January, 26in of rain had fallen. "Since then we have had 6-8in each month and the land just cannot soak up anymore moisture, it is absolutely sodden," she said.

Mr David Newbourne of the Game Conservancy Trust said he had been involved in a trial involving two 50-acre blocks of gripping.

"We found we could not detect any effect on the water table more than half a metre from the grip," he said, adding that tons of sediment were lost per acre per year: "The sediment traps were capable of holding 1.5 tonnes, but they were not big enough over a month."

"You do need to block these drains and, the steeper the drains, the greater the water flow," he said.

Mr Newbourne described gripping as a knee-jerk reaction by government after the war. "They thought that, if we drained the hills, we could farm them more, it was the perceived wisdom of the time," he said."If you look at the North York Moors they are very dry and there is wall to wall heather. These days the perceived wisdom is that the drainage causes the high floods and needs blocking."

One visitor was appalled at the millions of pounds which must have been spent over the years to encourage landowners to grip. He felt there had been no scientific research beforehand and now more money was being spent to encourage the blocking of drains.

Mr Paul Evans of English Nature explained that the Yorkshire Dales had 150,000 hectares of moorland habitats and up to 60,000 hectares of sites of special scientific interest.

Blanket bog, such as that at Camm Farm, covered 1.5m hectares of land in the United Kingdom, most of it in Scotland. That found in Ireland was under threat through afforestation and peat digging.

"That 1.5m ha is about 25pc across the world, so it is very important," he said. "We also have half to one third of all the blanket bog in Europe so that makes it even more important."

The European Union had made a designation on blanket bog which meant the government now had a duty to restore and look after it.

"In the last three years, more than 100,000ha of blanket bog has been registered as important and the government is committed to looking after it and bringing it back for nature conservation," he said.

Blanket bog provided habitat for red grouse, golden plover, merlin and the more common waders such as curlew and snipe.

Anyone interested in the Upper Wharfedale project or grants for blocking moorland grips can contact North Yorkshire FWAG on 01609 783632 or the Environment Agency on 01904 692 296.