3. What efforts are being made by the Welsh Government to restore peatlands? OAQ54822

Thank you. Our aim is to bring under sustainable management all areas of peatland and a minimum of 25 per cent of modified peatland supporting semi-natural habitat in Wales. I will be launching a national peatland restoration programme in the spring of next year, which will set out our commitment to peatland restoration in 2020.

Thank you for that encouraging answer. Can I say, Minister, that last month the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service held an international conference of the title 'Manage the Fuel: Reduce the Risk', looking at the risk of wildfires? This conference did focus on land management practice internationally, and some really valuable lessons. There's also the Lost Peatlands of South Wales project, looking to re-wet former bogs in areas rather enticingly known as 'the Alps of Glamorgan', so I do hope you will be paying attention to these developments.

I wasn't aware of that conference. I might actually write to the chief fire officer and see if I can find out some more information about that, because we are funding quite a lot of activity around peatlands, because we know, again, as part of our decarbonisation plans, that we really need to make sure we restore as much as possible. As I say, there are quite a few schemes. You may be aware of New LIFE for Welsh Raised Bogs—that's an EU LIFE-funded project, which I've actually visited, in mid Wales.

Minister, will you join me in congratulating Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council on their successful project bid to the National Lottery to restore peatlands in the upper Afan Valley and over into the RCT area around Glyncorrwg? As you know, it may be part of the Glamorgan alps, as David Melding has highlighted. Will you also look, therefore, at what the Welsh Government can do to support that project, because you've just highlighted that you're looking at the whole peatland programme for 2020, and this is a perfect example of how we can work with local authorities in an area that is already going to be working on developing peatlands?

Thank you. I absolutely welcome the partnership approach from both Neath Port Talbot and the Rhondda Cynon Taf councils. It's great they had that successful bid with National Lottery funding—a really important project, as you say, over 500 hectares of historic peatland landscape, and I think they've had about £0.25 million, maybe just a bit more than £0.25 million, to develop their plans further.