Help at hand for repairing damage to Ireland’s blanket bogs

A new manual (links below) offers practical guidance for farmers and other landowners who want to undertake restoration actions on their land

Covering more than seven and a half thousand hectares of Ireland’s uplands, blanket bogs are vital habitats for many rare and threatened species, from insect-eating carnivorous plants to increasingly threatened birdlife.

Over the holidays, like many, I’ve been out hiking in the uplands. Following winding paths up wet peaty mountainsides, enjoying the fresh air and the challenge of the ascent. The uplands are where many of us are drawn to roam, where visible human structures are few and far between and expansive views give our senses some relief from the bustle and clutter of modern life. Many popular routes are now well equipped with raised wooden walkways that mitigate the impact of too many pairs of feet trampling across the heather-clad peat that blankets these mountainsides.

In winter, such sweeping slopes are a tapestry of spongey bog mosses, brittle heathers, and the golden browns of purple moor grass waving in the wind. Distant hills and intervening lowlands fade to the blue of the faraway as we pause to take in the views. Overhead, occasional merlin, peregrine falcon, hen harrier, or even a golden eagle can sometimes be seen soaring on updrafts. In spring, now not so far away, ground nesting birds that have adapted to breed among the low growing vegetation will attempt to raise a brood — curlew, lapwing and golden plover among them.

These are Ireland's blanket bogs. Covering more than 7,500 hectares of Ireland’s uplands, blanket bogs are vital habitats for many rare and threatened species, from insect-eating carnivorous plants to increasingly threatened birdlife. As such, they are legally protected as a priority habitat type under the EU Habitats Directive, provided that active peat accumulation is occurring within a site.

Aside from their biodiversity value, the condition of our blanket bog habitats has a profound impact on the health of the wider environment. For a start, more than 80% of drinking water supplies in Ireland comes from upland catchments which are mostly covered by blanket bog. When eroded, peaty particles enter water supplies through surface water flows, then combine with chlorine to form carcinogenic compounds that are challenging to remove in the treatment process. Upland environments are also key to how surface water moves through the whole catchment area, with ecologically intact blanket bogs storing water and, in many instances, attenuating downstream flooding that can arise from storms and heavy rainfall. However, when drained and otherwise damaged, eroded peat causes rapid overland flows that can exacerbate downstream flooding;

Peat soils also play an important part in carbon cycling. Irish peatlands, including our blanket bogs, store just over half of all soil carbon on the island of Ireland. But this functioning depends on how wet or dry the peat is. Dry, eroded peat, rather than storing and sequestering carbon, instead releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When drained for turf cutting or afforestation or burnt to accommodate sheep grazing, bogs flip this service, and instead become active sources of atmospheric carbon. These are the many reasons why we are hearing so much more in recent years about peatland restoration.

Now, a new ‘Blanket bog restoration toolkit’, published in November 2024, offers practical guidance for farmers and other landowners who want to undertake restoration actions on their land. This manual outlines ways to patch up peat hags, block drains and repair eroded surfaces.

• One of the interventions outlined is how to place coir logs across open bare peat in order to combat erosion by water.
• Another is how to spread geotextile sheets like carpets across damaged peat in order to help stabilise the ground and create the conditions for plants to grow there again.
• For blocking up drainage channels in the peat, the toolkit outlines how to use a digger to ‘borrow’ peat from adjacent areas to make peat dams that halt ongoing damage from drains and instead facilitate the water table to rise once again to the surface and thus create the conditions for bog plants to reestablish.
• It lays out how to approach the control of invasive alien species such as self-seeded confers and rhododendron.

As it is our wider society that benefits form these actions, it is society, through agri environment schemes, that rightly foots the bill.

Ideally, payments can be made to farmers who implement these conservation actions through ‘Results-Based agri-environment Payment Schemes’, which reward farmers for delivering improvements to the health of habitats on their landholdings, measured by the results rather than the actions.

Farmers who achieve a ‘score’ of 10/10 for a parcel of land, for example, receive a higher payment than those who might only get 6/10 for lands where the drains, for example, continue to channel water from the bog and compromise its ecological integrity. In this way, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, results-based schemes respect the farmers' knowledge of their land and their ability to innovate, as well as delivering better value for money to the tax payer by linking the level of payment to the actual results achieved by conservation interventions. 

While Ireland's peat bogs have been around for thousands of years, their future is now very much in jeopardy. Restoration is urgent. The fact that such a high proportion of our blanket bogs is in public ownership, with State-owned company Coillte at the helm, is a massive opportunity yet to be realised. Overhauling the mission and objectives of Coillte, with the mandate to put biodiversity, climate and water quality as core objectives, would be transformative for Ireland's natural environment.

For bogs in private ownership, locally-led initiatives that support farmers to transition to active, incentivised conservation action are crucial. There is no time to delay in changing the trajectory for Ireland's blanket bogs, from one in which damage is ongoing to one in which healthy bogs are restored and recognised as being among our most valuable allies in the face of growing impacts of climate change. 

• See: exa.mn/tow