Anja Murray: We have done a great deal of damage to bogs in a very short space of time

Ecologist Anja Murray discusses the changing times of Ireland’s peat bogs

Peatlands in Connemara, Co Galway. Picture: iStock

We have always had a deep relationship with peat bogs in Ireland. Thousands of years ago, in Neolithic times, people believed peat bogs were the meeting point of sky and earth, portals or entrances to the ‘otherworld’. Votive offerings were often left in bogs, precious objects offered up to appease the goddess of the land and assuage the threat of storms, droughts and plagues. Since we began harvesting deep peat for fuel in the 1960s, countless artefacts have been unearthed from bogs, including the bodies of sacrificed kings from the Bronze Age.

We have come a long way since in our understanding, especially in the past 20 years. We now understand, for example, that the conditions that preserve bog bodies, bog butter and even ancient manuscripts, are the same conditions that make peat bogs enormous stores of fossil carbon.