Anja Murray: Turf continues to be illegally extracted from protected areas

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

Large-scale peat excavation from a bog.

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.