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Action 24. Cessation of Turf Cutting in Raised Bogs - Press Material

IPCC have prepared five press releases relating to this issue for general use.

Press Release 1: There's More to Bogs Than Turf
Active raised bogs (peat forming raised bogs) are seriously under threat of extinction in Ireland. Only 0.6% of active raised bog remains today. In the last ten years over a third of active raised bog (1,000ha) has been lost as a direct result of turf cutting taking place within protected peatlands. Raised bogs are not being protected, despite their conservation designation as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs) because turf cutting is being allowed to continue. The government has offered a generous compensation package for turbary rights holders to stop cutting turf on designated peatland sites. If active raised bog is to be saved from extinction in Ireland turbary rights holders in protected peatlands must cease cutting turf immediately and avail of the compensation.

As the turf-cutting season begins the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC) (see editors note 1) would like to draw you attention to some of the values of peatlands and the importance of conserving them for future generations:

Habitat: Ireland contains over 50% of all the raised bog habitat remaining in Europe and internationally the blanket bogs of Ireland and the UK form the largest single contribution (10 - 15%) of this habitat in the world. 44% of NHAs and 50% of SACs in Ireland contain peatland habitat.

Wildlife: 49% of all endangered birds in Ireland occur on peatlands, most as breeding species. 23% of all endangered plants are peatland species and 26% of our mammals depend on peatlands in some phase of their life cycle. For example red grouse, otter and marsh saxifrage.

Climate change - the carbon store: In Ireland, peatlands store 1,200 million tons of carbon. Undisturbed peat accumulates carbon from the air at a rate of up to 0.7 tonnes per hectare per year.

Landscape: The landscape value of peatlands offers one of the few remaining areas of wilderness experience in Ireland today.

Social and economic uses: Peatlands have played an important role in the economies and identity of rural areas. Peatlands support many functions and activities such as agriculture and tourism.

Archaeology: Peatlands have been developing in the Ireland for 10,000 years. Because of the anaerobic conditions within peatlands they have preserved important artifacts and information on past environments. To date 3,893 archaeological sites have been recorded within peatlands. For example bog bodies and bog butter.

Health: People are an integral part of nature and biodiversity. Only by living in balance with other species and ecosystems can human health be sustained.

ENDS

Editors note 1:
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a non-governmental organisation that was formed in 1982 to ensure the conservation of a representative sample of Irish bogs. Our activities include education and publicity, promoting environmental awareness, provision of information and encouraging the protection and conservation of our national heritage for the common good. We own and manage a number of peatlands for conservation and we run the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, which is open to visitors and school groups. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a company limited by guarantee, with charitable status. www.ipcc.ie

Interviews available on request, telephone IPCC on 045-860133 and ask for Sarah Malone, Conservation Officer, IPCC, Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Lullymore, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.
tters under this scheme. The list of sites concerned in 2008 are as follows:

Press Release 2: Get Tough on Turf Minister!!
Active (peat-forming) raised bog is facing extinction in Ireland today. Only 0.6% of active raised bog remains and these 2,000 hectares are seriously under threat from turf cutting. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC) is calling on Minister John Gormley to get tough on turf cutting and bring it to a stop on all Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs). All active raised bogs in Ireland are protected as SACs or NHAs. However these designated peatlands are not being protected while turf cutting is allowed to continue within them. In the last ten years over a third of active raised bog (1,000 ha) has been lost as a direct result of turf cutting taking place within conserved peatlands.

Studies carried out on the effects of turf cutting on raised bog over the last 20 years by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) have proven beyond argument that turf cutting has a massively destructive impact on raised bogs. A raised bog is essentially a mound of water that supports and is retained by turf. Drainage and turf cutting at the margins of the bog lowers the water level within bog, causing the peat to dry out. This drying out of the bog kills the vegetation growing on the bog and prevents the bog from actively forming peat. When this happens the bog stops growing. Unless we take urgent action raised bogs will become relict features in our landscape.

Once all turf cutting ceases on a raised bog restoration works can be carried out, including drain blocking, to prevent any further loss of active raised bog and hopefully to restore damaged areas of bog to become active (peat-forming) once more. However, this restoration work will not be successful while turf cutting is taking place and new drains are continuing to be opened, which negatively affect the hydrology of the bog. It is of vital importance that all turf cutting in protected SACs and NHAs ceases immediately if we are to save active raised bog in Ireland from extinction.

ENDS

Editors note:
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a non-governmental organisation that was formed in 1982 to ensure the conservation of a representative sample of Irish bogs. Our activities include education and publicity, promoting environmental awareness, provision of information and encouraging the protection and conservation of our national heritage for the common good. We own and manage a number of peatlands for conservation and we run the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, which is open to visitors and school groups. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a company limited by guarantee, with charitable status. www.ipcc.ie

Interviews available on request, telephone IPCC on 045-860133 and ask for Sarah Malone, Conservation Officer, IPCC, Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Lullymore, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.



Press Release 3: Restoration of Raised Bogs - protecting the cultural identity of Ireland
If people feel the need to work in the bog this summer why not switch from cutting turf and help block drains on our damaged raised bog sites so as to restore their hydrology. Active raised bogs (peat forming raised bogs) are seriously under threat of extinction in Ireland. Only 0.6% of active raised bog remains today. In the last ten years over a third of active raised bog (1,000ha) has been lost as a direct result of turf cutting taking place within protected peatlands. Faced with the extinction of active raised bog in Ireland state bodies such as the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Coillte have begun to carry out restoration work on damaged raised bogs with the aim of restoring the bogs to actively form peat again.

The most important task to carry out when restoring a peatland is the blocking of drains. This raises the water table and prevents the bog surface from drying out. The waterlogged substrate is poor in oxygen, which makes it very difficult for bacteria and fungi to survive. With the absence to these micro-organisms the dead plant material on the bog surface is not decomposed and accumulates in the waterlogged conditions as peat. Once this accumulation of peat begins the bog has been restored to an actively peat forming habitat.

NPWS have been developing drain-blocking techniques on protected raised bogs over the last twenty years in collaboration with Dutch scientists. However, large-scale restoration cannot take place on protected sites until all turf cutting has ceased. The action of cutting turf opens up new drains on the bog and prevents the restoration of the site as a whole hydrological unit. Coillte, the state-owned forestry service, has also been carrying restoration projects on raised bogs that were planted with trees in the past. This restoration work involved the removal of conifer forestry from the bog and the blocking of drains.

The Irish Peatland Conservation Council (see editors note 1) have been carrying out restoration works on Lodge Bog in County Kildare over the last two years and are continuing the restoration work this summer. Volunteers are welcome to participate in drain blocking and vegetation mapping, please contact IPCC at Tel: (045) 860133. If people feel the need to work in the bog this summer why not switch from cutting turf and help block drains on our damaged raised bog sites so as to restore their hydrology. This would be a positive contribution to the conservation and restoration of raised bogs in Ireland, which are an integral part of the cultural and green identity of Ireland and need to be preserved for present and future generations. It is of vital importance that all turf cutting in protected raised bogs ceases immediately if we are to save active raised bog in Ireland from extinction.

ENDS

Editors note 1:
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a non-governmental organisation that was formed in 1982 to ensure the conservation of a representative sample of Irish bogs. Our activities include education and publicity, promoting environmental awareness, provision of information and encouraging the protection and conservation of our national heritage for the common good. We own and manage a number of peatlands for conservation and we run the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, which is open to visitors and school groups. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a company limited by guarantee, with charitable status. www.ipcc.ie

Interviews available on request, telephone IPCC on 045-860133 and ask for Sarah Malone, Conservation Officer, IPCC, Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Lullymore, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.



Press Release 4: Peat - Ireland's Traditional Fuel?
It is natural to think of peat or turf as the fuel of the ordinary people of Ireland, burned on the hearth since time immemorial. After all, the bogs have been around for a long time, some dating back more than 10,000 years. But is this belief well-founded? Liam Kennedy, the professor of economic and social history at Queen's University, Belfast has this to say about the tradition of turf cutting in Ireland:

It may come as a surprise to some that there are only a few scattered mentions of peat in Fergus Kelly's magisterial Early Irish Farming, which draws on the ancient Irish law tracts. In an early exercise in natural history and political propaganda - Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland - the use of firewood but not peat is mentioned. Gerald came to Ireland for the first time as part of the entourage of King Henry 11 in 1185, and returned to the country on two further occasions. As his History is alert to differences between England & Wales and Ireland, and engages with natural history, it is surprising that he did not mention the use of peat, that is, if it had been in widespread use.

The fourteenth-century Yellow Book of Lecan paints a mouth-watering scene of the roasting of pieces of beef, mutton and ham, on spits, over a fire of ash-wood. Another medieval account speaks of a trout being grilled on a spit over a fire of dry bracken. Later in time, one of John Derricke's famous prints of a Gaelic chieftain's feast, from the 1580s, shows a whole beast being roasted over a wood fire. Of course the fuel of choice of the Gaelic lords may have been different from that of the common people, a question that needs to be borne in mind. Some writers speak of a hierarchy of fuels in pre-industrial societies, to some extent reflecting differences in the social order.

Still, as the remaining woodlands in Ireland came under pressure from farming and the commercial exploitation of timber, during the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, the relative attractiveness of peat production for fuel must have been enhanced. We find for instance in the 1640s that peat was being saved just north of Dublin as a consequence of "wood for firing being very dear in great part of the land" (Gerard Boate, Irelands Naturall History, London, 1652). Boate also mentions the use of sea-coals in the Dublin area, a harbinger of things to come: the tussle between coal and peat that was such a marked feature of the fuel economy of 19th century Irish society.

It may be that in the west of Ireland because of limited tree cover, peat was being utilised much earlier than in the north and east. But unfortunately the historical record for the medieval period seems to be largely silent on the exploitation of the boglands for fuel. Whether these silences can be interpreted as meaning that the widespread adoption of peat as a fuel is a relatively recent phenomenon - no more than a few centuries old - must await further scholarship. But, as suggested here, there is at least some evidence to support the conjecture that this was indeed the case.

ENDS

Editors note:
Interviews available on request, telephone IPCC on 045-860133 and ask for Sarah Malone, Conservation Officer, IPCC, Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Lullymore, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.



Press Release 5: Turf Cutting to be Phased out to Protect the Country's Heritage
This summer sees the beginning of the cessation of turf cutting on all designated raised bogs of heritage importance. Turbury rights holders on 32 raised bog Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) have reached the end of a ten year notice period, or derogation, to cease cutting turf. The derogation will continue until 2012 for the remaining 21 raised bog SACs and to 2014 for 75 raised bog Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs). Turbury rights holders must cease turf cutting at the end of these derogation periods in a bid to protect the country's peatland heritage.

The Country's leading peatland conservation NGO, The Irish Peatland Conservation Council, welcomes the decision from the Minister for the Environment on this issue. "We are very disappointed that Minister Gormley did not decide to protect all of the SAC's now in view of the fact that less than 1% of the habitat remains in a natural state" says IPCC's Conservation Policy Officer Sarah Malone.

To successfully implement the cessation of turf cutting on these protected sites the Department of the Environment plans to set up a working group consisting of several government departments including the Department of the Environment and the Department of Agriculture. This working group is waiting for the go-ahead from the Minister of the Environment before it can start the process of implementing the Cessation of Turf Cutting Scheme. "The government has had ten years to prepare for this cessation scheme and yet they have left it to the last minute to form this working group. This delay by the government in taking action means that the cessation scheme will not be fully implemented until the yet to be formed working group publish their report" added Sarah Malone.

The lack of action up until now by the Department of the Environment has meant that our raised bogs, which are the best examples of raised bogs remaining in Europe, are not being protected. Active raised bogs (peat forming raised bogs) are seriously under threat of extinction in Ireland. Only 0.6% of active raised bog remains today. In the last ten years it has been scientifically proven by the National Parks and Wildlife Service that over a third of active raised bog (1,000ha) has been lost as a direct result of turf cutting taking place within protected peatlands. Raised bogs are not being protected, despite their conservation designation as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs) because turf cutting is still being allowed to continue.

ENDS

Editors note:
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a non-governmental organisation that was formed in 1982 to ensure the conservation of a representative sample of Irish bogs. Our activities include education and publicity, promoting environmental awareness, provision of information and encouraging the protection and conservation of our national heritage for the common good. We own and manage a number of peatlands for conservation and we run the Bog of Allen Nature Centre, which is open to visitors and school groups. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is a company limited by guarantee, with charitable status. www.ipcc.ie

Interviews available on request, telephone IPCC on 045-860133 and ask for Sarah Malone, Conservation Policy Officer, IPCC, Bog of Allen Nature Centre, Lullymore, Rathangan, Co. Kildare.

Return to Introductory Page on The Cessation of Turf Cutting