Dowrog Common continues to benefit from the ‘LIFEquake’ project, a major conservation project, led by NRW and supported by the EU LIFE fund. This project aims to restore key environmental and habitat conditions. We want to maintain transition mire and quaking bog habitats and their related features. Our goal is to improve the wider wetland landscape to a favourable conservation status across the seven project SACs, including the northwest Pembrokeshire Commons.

Dowrog Common is one project site where removing the current surface vegetation and superficial peat is necessary. This action will protect nearby transition mire and quaking bog, allowing for future expansion through hydroseral succession. The location has been characterised by one or more of the following features: 

• Heavily dominated by bulky sedges and grasses such as Tussock sedge Carex paniculata and Common reed Phragmites australis to the extent that mowing and grazing alone are judged unlikely to recover and support good condition transition mire in the future,
• Areas where agricultural practices have notably enriched the peat. In these spots, removing the upper layer of peat is the best way to support the redevelopment of transition mire rafts in oligotrophic hollows.
• Locations suspected or known to have recently supported transition mire or which are adjacent to extant stands of transition mire and which have become over-run by bulky grasses and sedges. 

This past November, contractors have been busy scraping and excavating areas of enriched peat and undesirable invasive species. The objective of this action is to lower the ground surface to create shallow flooded areas for the future colonisation of wetland species in turn creating new areas of transition mire. Roughly 1 hectare of ground has been removed with the impact being almost instantaneous with regard to the amount of open water created. This follows on from the same type of work last year where the main Dowrog Pool was reinstated. 

Although the focus is on enhancing and promoting area of transition mire and quaking bog, the other benefits include the improvement of habitat for wetland birds, amphibians and invertebrates. Last year’s work has already provided new records for the reserve including Bar Tailed Godwit and the return of Lapwings.