ENVIRONMENTAL experts in the New Forest have come to the rescue of a wildlife haven that is helping to tackle global warming.

Since last year a Forestry Commission team has been monitoring dramatic changes taking place in a five-acre bog near Shirley Holms.

The rate at which water was sluicing through the site and destroying the spongy moss seemed to be increasing every month.

Now the commission has managed to stem the damage using 300 bales of heather.

The work has been carried out as part of the Forestry Commission's £1.7 million contribution to the New Forest LIFE partnership, a project aimed at restoring 9,900 acres of land over five years.

LIFE ranger Vicky Myers said: "The bog at Shirley Holms is among the Forest's most precious habitats.

"It's among the finest in Southern England for plants such as the insect-eating sundew. Dozens of other plant and animal species flourish there too.

"We've packed the heather bales into a spot where a stream running out of the mire was rapidly eroding the mosses.

"The work will shore up the peat and stop silt flowing out."

Miss Myers said the site had been fenced off, but stressed that animals still had access to drinking water from the stream.

About 95 per cent of Britain's lowland valley mires have been lost during the past 100 years.

But bogs are of global environmental importance because their mosses absorb the damaging "greenhouse gases" that are destroying the world's ozone layer.