Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks will together share £4.1m of South West Water funding for a 5-year project starting in April.

The money will be used to fund restoration of some of Dartmoor's and Exmoor's blanket bog, in order to conserve and enhance the habitat for upland wildlife, to improve water quality and increase the potential of the south west England's blanket bog to store carbon and help mitigate the impacts of climate change. On Dartmoor, the project will be called the Dartmoor Mires Project and will be managed by the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) with the support of the Environment Agency, Duchy of Cornwall and Natural England which together make up the Action for Wildlife Partnership. The work will be carried out in partnership with Dartmoor Commoners' Council, for its knowledge of the blanket bog, as well as the Ministry of Defence and the RSPB.

Suzanne Goodfellow, director of park management at DNPA said: "A pilot blanket bog restoration project has been running on Exmoor over the past few years and some limited trials have taken place on Dartmoor. The new funding provides a wonderful opportunity to take this work forward." The split funding will be spent on restoration works such as blocking ditches and erosion gullies in order to create shallow pools which promote the regeneration of moorland bog vegetation. The moors will thus be 'stitched' back together, reducing the damaging effects of old drainage ditches, former peat cuttings and erosion gullies.

The project will also be investigating whether the work brings benefits in terms of slowing the rate of run off into streams and rivers, after rainfall.