It’s time to say slán to the slean
Farmers and the Department of the Environment have an agreement whereby bog owners will be allowed to harvest turf in special areas of conservation (SACs) until 2015, but Connacht IFA president Michael Silke has accused the department of trying to renege on the agreement.
Over the past few months, he claims, department staff have been telling farmers in the midlands that they will have to stop cutting turf by 2008.
“This is a completely unacceptable approach from the department, after signing up to an agreement in 2004 allowing for domestic-use turf-cutting up until 2015,” says Silke.
He maintains that what had been agreed in 2004 was that, in 2015, the situation would be reviewed by bog owners and the department.
The department has surveyed Ireland’s designated bogs which, because of their rarity, are of European importance.
A department spokesman says there is concern that the level of cutting use was damaging boglands.
“In the light of the survey, the department has had discussions with the IFA on implications for turf-cutting in designated areas,” says the spokesman.
“It was known during the discussions in 2004 that this review would take place and that turf-cutting on designated bogs beyond 2008 would depend on its outcome. The department has also been operating a generous compensation and bog purchase scheme since 1999.”
Clearly, this is an issue that the new environment minister will have to grapple with. In the 1970’s, Ireland’s bogs looked like disappearing. Many had practically been cut away and there was also widespread planting of conifers — the area shown in our photograph is now covered by forestry.
The advent of machine-cutting by domestic users also resulted in the destruction of bogs which had been cut in a far neater manner by traditional sleans for generations.
But in 1982, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC) began a Save the Bogs campaign and now well over 40,000 hectrares are dedicated to nature conservation.
A key milestone was reached, in 1986, when Clara Bog, in Co Offaly, the largest raised bog in the country, was declared a natural nature reserve.
Strangely enough, a Dutchman has played a key role in the campaign to conserve our boglands. Holland was the first country to use up all of its peatlands. Dutch researchers in Ireland over 25 years ago saw a similar trend and raised the alarm. A partnership between Irish and Dutch conservationists was formed.
The Dutch put their money where their mouths were and, largely through the inspiration of Matthijs Schouten, the “father of peatland conservation”,” they bought three peatlands — Scragh Bog in Co Westmeath, Cummeragh River Bog in Co Kerry and Clochar na gCon in Co Galway. They then handed these peatlands over to the Irish nation. Irish bogs may have been lost but for Dutch intervention, says the IPCC’s Nuala Madigan.
Coillte, meanwhile, is engaged in a number of projects to conserve 1,990 hectares of blanket bogland and 571 hectares of raised bogland.
Work is nearing completion on the active blanket bog sites, while restoration work on the 14 raised bog sites in the midlands and mid-west began at the end of 2004.
Raised bog once covered 310,000 hectares of Ireland. Today, only a small percentage of this area of conservation value remains. The bogs being restored have been selected with the approval of the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
By the end of this project, significant habitat restoration work will have been completed on over 5% on the national area of raised bog conserved in SACs.
Boardwalks on two of the sites — one close to Athlone, Co Westmeath, and the other near Frenchpark, Co Roscommon — allow visitors to observe closely but safely the recovering bog vegetation.
As well as being a habitat for wildlife and plants, bogs provide a wealth of information and an invaluable record of landscape, forestry and climate change over the past 12,000 years.
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