Plan to restore life to bog land

An ambitious project is underway to restore Ireland’s bog lands into a wetland paradise.

The Bord na Móna and Environmental Protection Agency plan will breathe new life into 150,000 acres of severely degraded cut-away bog lands.

Bord na Móna manages 200,000 acres of bog land, three quarters of which has become spent and lifeless due to the industrial harvesting of peat.

However, over 90,000 acres of land is available for rewetting and restoration over the coming years with more lands coming on stream as time goes on.

At one stage, almost 13% of Ireland’s landmass consisted of bogs which were teeming with birds, exotic plants and insect life. They also soaked up most of the country’s rainfall.

A pilot project on a rewetted industrial cutaway bog in Bellacorick, Co Mayo, has shown that plants and wildlife flourish if the bogs are left to fill up with water naturally. For years, the 16,000-acre bog near Belmullet was dead and barren, but it now resembles the Florida Everglades and is teeming with life.

Biologist David Wilson, of UCD, said: “It went from a desert with nothing growing on it to a wetland in a really short space of time.”

Bord na Móna botanist and zoologist Catherine Farrell, who oversaw the project, said Bellacorick was only the beginning: “The area is now like the landscape that existed in Ireland 8,000 years ago; we call it teenage peat land — it has been a fantastic story and we are delighted.”