The peat bog moors in the high plateaux of the Ardennes have been damaged. With them, an entire biodiversity is under threat. In the past few years, Europe and Wallonia has attempted to make amends for mistakes of the past, in the context of wide-ranging restoration projects. Sara Cristofoli, research assistant at the Department for the Study of Natural and Agricultural Habitats (Demna) from Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (ULg), has devoted her thesis to studying the reaction of flora and fauna to the fragmentation and restoration of the peat bogs on two high Ardennes plateaux: Saint Hubert and the Tailles.

Polders, dams, towns, deforestation or, in contrast, the creation of artificial forests, the creation of natural parks and attempts to save species under threat of extinction: these examples demonstrate humans’ impact on their environment.

Other such areas exist, such as the damp moors and the Ardennes peat bogs. These ecosystems respond to relatively rare conditions. Outside Wallonia, these are largely found in the countries of Scandinavia. Flora and fauna develop within the peat bogs which are particular to this environment (see “Don’t get bogged down”). However, over the past two hundred years, these regions have seen Belgium’s modest summits nearly disappear.

Let’s go back to 1870, the end of a century which saw the exponential industrialisation of the western world. More than a hundred years before “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Home” and Nicolas Hulot's documentaries, ecological principles had not yet been mainstreamed into society. “In our regions at that time”, explains Sara Cristofoli, “there was a feeling that so-called ‘uncultivated lands’, including the moors and the peat bogs had to be developed. Halfway through the 19th century, a law was passed promoting the planting of spruce trees, which were more economically profitable. The damp soils were thus drained, so that these trees could grow.” However, the soil was still too damp and was found to be unsuitable for conifers. It turns out that the undertaking did not yield great results. “In some regions, when the trees were mature, they were cut down and were not replanted. The habitats were thus cleared and abandoned.” Planting spruces in these specific habitats turned out to be disastrous for the diversity of the flora and fauna in the area. The peat bogs depend on a huge amount of water. Drainage caused irreversible damage to these habitats and thus led to their fragmentation. “When a habitat suffers fragmentation, it is reduced in size. Only fragments of the original habitat will survive, known as “habitat patches”, which become increasingly isolated from one another and end up disappearing.”