We've been given information, we've been given warnings, we've been given leeway but the scandal is that we still fail to value and protect the fragile ecosystems of our bogs
Click here to read the full story in the Irish Examiner
ANJA MURRAY
Our relationship with bogs is ever-changing. In the Bronze Age, bogs were held as sacred. As a merging of water, earth and sky, bogs were where the veil between this world and the ‘otherworld’ was considered to be at its thinnest. This wetness that characterises peat bogs is why plant matter in living, active bogs accumulates as peat.
The conditions are so wet and stagnant that there is no oxygen, and normal decay processes don’t work. This is the same reason that 10,000-year-old tree stumps and the sacrificed bodies of kings from more than 2,000 years ago are so well preserved in peat bogs.
Specialist plants have adapted to the permanently wet, slightly acidic and low nutrient environment. Sundews are plants that catch insects on sticky little tentacles, digesting them and absorbing their nutrients. Butterwort is another insectivorous plant of Irish peat bogs. It has sticky leaves to catch midges on. Plants eating animals is not the normal order of things, but on a peat bog, the unique conditions have resulted in the evolution of many rare and unusual species. Each has earned its place in these unique habitats.
Since colonial clearances eliminated most of woodlands, people turned to peat bogs for fuel. Turf cutting during the summer months became part of our culture. Then in the 1950s, industrial-scale peat mining began to gobble up the midlands' raised bogs in earnest, bringing jobs where they were much needed. Vast tracts of bog have since been drained, harvested and burnt for electricity. Now, less than 50,000 ha of the original 310,000 ha of raised bog in Ireland remains relatively intact.
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The real news story here is that, as a country, we are still failing to value and protect such a valuable resource, after being given so much leeway by the European Courts for decades. The scandal is that even in the throes of a biodiversity crisis, we cannot agree on practical actions to effectively implement our collective responsibilities for conservation.
In a bog, where nothing breaks down, time has a way of standing still. Our relationship with peat bogs, however, is always changing, and a breakthrough is now long overdue. The Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change called for extensive peatland restoration, the courts are pushing too. In the future, the young people of today will not thank us for failing to leave even the smallest sample of intact raised bogs for posterity.