High up on a Manx hillside, Sarah Hickey effortlessly pushes a metre-long metal rod into the wet ground until it disappears almost to her hands.

“This is pretty deep here,” she says, reading the markings on the probe. Beneath her boots is peat, built up over thousands of years and consisting of partially decayed plants and organic matter.

Hickey is the island’s Peatland Officer and part of an Uplands team of just three, who, between them, manage about 8,000 hectares of the Island’s hills.