Bog land in Northern Ireland constitutes a more than significant reservoir of stored carbon. Deep peat covers 12% of the available land area.
Its maintenance and restoration are critically important in the context of Ireland’s response to the challenge of climate change.
Bogs play a key role in improving water quality while also delivering a number of critically important environmental and conservation-related benefits, which are of value to society as a whole.
These were the key messages communicated to members of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists during the recent visit to the Garron Plateau in Co. Antrim.
The event was hosted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Northern Ireland.
Bog land NI
The plateau extends to some 4,000ha and features the largest intact bog in Northern Ireland. The core of the site is in public ownership with private farm land making up its periphery.
Blanket bog has been likened to the equivalent of Ireland’s rain forest; such is its significance from a global warming and biodiversity perspective.
Intact bog land has the potential to absorb significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
However, this resource has been eroded as a result, for the most part, of drainage schemes that have dried out the land.
As a consequence, impacted areas have becomes significant CO2 emission sources.
RSPB NI staff view bog restoration, in the first instance, as a way of reducing CO2 emission levels from Northern Ireland’s blanket bogs.
In practical terms this means physically blocking drains that have previously been established in peat lands. And work of this nature has been underway on the Garron Plateau for a number of years.
RSPB’s Martin Clift commented: “Peat land restoration as a physical discipline is 30-years-old and has been developing continuously throughout this period.
“Our focus is on restoring those areas of the bog where most erosion has taken place up to this point.
“Climate change is also having an impact on the health of our bog lands. And we are already seeing this in places like Dartmoor in the south west of England.
“However, annual rain fall levels in Northern Ireland are still sufficiently high enough to allow the development of peat land restoration projects,” he added.
Peat on the Garron Plateau site extends to a depth of 6m.
“This process has been ongoing since the end of the last ice age. However, on the top of the surrounding hills peat is being lost at a rate of 2-3mm. And this is the process that we are trying to stop,” Clift concluded.
