Bradford Council has committed £200,000 to re-wet more areas of the district’s moorland.

By blocking drainage channels and planting sphagnum moss, the Council hopes to create an active blanket bog, which enables peat to form.

Parts of the upper catchments will also be re-profiled to slow the flow of water down the moor.

Research shows that peat stores twice as much carbon as forests, so creating more peat is a powerful global weapon against the effects of greenhouse gases.

The funding builds on work already carried out on Ilkley Moor in partnership with the Environment Agency at Backstone Beck.

The £180,000 project was focused on reducing flooding below the moor but used many of the same techniques.

It will focus on other becks on Ilkley Moor (Hebers Ghyll and Spicey Gill) and other council moorland sites, such as Harden Moor, where similar work has also been done, and Penistone Hill at Haworth, where the council hopes to secure further Nature Recovery funding from Natural England.

The existing scheme at Ilkley Moor included installing flow monitoring equipment and the public are invited to take photos at fixed points and upload them onto the website so the site can be monitored.

So far, the data shows a reduction in peak flows from the moor, reducing flood risk in Ilkley along the route of the beck.