Campaign grows to save boglands

UP to fairly recent times, bogs were simply regarded as sources of fuel or useless wasteland.

But attitudes have changed and nowadays bogs are looked on as being of huge environmental value, places that can tell us a great deal about our past and homes of nature.

Rural people have an ingrained affinity with the bog which provided fuel to keep home fires burning, while experiences on the peatlands have inspired balladmakers and poets, not least Seamus Heaney.