Climate change and National Parks
Climate change will affect all the different habitats and wildlife in National Parks. But some of our habitats, if looked after properly, could help fight climate change by becoming carbon sinks and could help deal with some of the effects of climate change.
Climate Change is bad news for National Parks
Climate change is already having an effect on the landscape, wildlife and local communities in National Parks. These are just some of the things that threaten our National Parks as the climate in Britain becomes warmer and wetter:
- More erosion of coastal cliffs and upland areas from sea and rain water
- Peatlands get eroded and start to leak out carbon rather than storing it
- River flooding damages fields and makes it difficult to get farm animals out
- Spring floods cause problems for ground nesting birds
- More visitors in warm weather creates more traffic problems and more C02
- Risk of more fires spreading over moorland, buring heather and damaging peat bog areas
- Loss of species and habitats that can not adpat quickly enough to changing weather
National Parks are good news for climate change!
National Parks cover about 10% of the land in Britain. They include a range of habitats, from mountains, moorlands, forests, grasslands, coasts and wetlands. Some of these habitats, if managed correctly, can help to combat climate change and to adapt to its effects by:
- Controlling floods by creating areas for floodwater rather than flooding towns or cities
- Conserving water in lakes and resevoirs
- Creating more woodlands so new trees soak up C02 as they grow
- Conserving peat bogs, which soak up and store C02
- Investing in micro renewable energy, like solar power, small hydro-electric generators, woodchip boilers and ground source heat pumps, to supply energy without any C02 emissions
See how restoring peatlands is turning a carbon source into a carbon sink
Find out how we look after our woodlands and plant new ones
See some of the projects we fund from our sustainable development fund
