OPINION / 14
The hole IN THE BOG Noeleen Smyth addresses the urgent need to take action on Ireland’s lost bog-lands
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ne of our favorite family tunes is the ‘Rattlin Bog’. The kids love the meandering, memorymelting verses, and growing up in Kildare we have watched that “hole in the Bog” of Allen get bigger and bigger. We have sat through many chats and discussions on what’s going to happen to that “hole in the bog” and have not been pleased with what we have seen so far, but that’s a story for another day. As a nation, we don’t often jump into action, but one of the quickest and most controversial decisions ever made was in 2019, with regard to peat harvesting. A high court decision effectively ended commercial peat harvesting in Ireland. This very abrupt decision has left an entire industry scrambling for supplies. The crazy situation we find ourselves in now is that we are importing Balkan peat to meet industry needs, creating another “hole” in another “rattlin” (which apparently means splendid) bog in another part of the world.
WHY ARE WE IN THIS DIRE SITUATION? On a recent visit to some cut-over bogs, near Allenwood in Co. Kildare, I chatted to a retired Irish Peatland Ecologist. I explained that I had been trying to get my head around how we ended up in such dire straits. He, even more depressingly, told me that we had the choice many years ago to opt for a more sustainable harvest of peat with a “Canadian” approach. In this method, peat moss is harvested continuously and yet still does not contribute to a decline in their peat bogs, as they allow millions of tonnes of peat to accumulate while harvesting, only ever utilising a small percentage of it. The Canadians manage harvesting sites in a sustainable way, never completely mining away the resource. The living Sphagnum peat cap is replaced after harvest and they don’t harvest down to marl, leaving a harvested site fully functional for the future. Sounds very logical and sensible, doesn’t it? Sadly we didn’t take that approach here in Ireland, and now, with our peat resource almost dwindling away to nothing, we are at a point of no return. Sphagnum peats could have been harvested in a very sustainable way. Peat is made from the moss genus Sphagnum and Sphagnum loves to grow here in Ireland. The mild Atlantic climate really suits them. We are a European stronghold for
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this genus with 33 of the 55 species of Sphagnum found here. However, despite loving to grow here, a recent conservation assessment conducted under Article 17 of the EU Habitats and Species Directive found that the status of Sphagnum was “inadequate.” Just four percent, or 50k hectares, of our peat-forming “active raised bogs” remain. With the drastic decline of our bogs comes the drastic decline of our peat-forming Sphagnum species, which are becoming even rarer as the habitat declines (NPWS 2019). The horticultural industry is hooked and totally reliant on peat compost and there are currently no truly viable alternatives. According to Growing Media Ireland, alternatives have been trialed, including green waste, bark, and coconut fibre. They have all been assessed as falling short in terms of quality, health and safety, and carbon footprint.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Sphagnum moss grows so well here in Ireland that it is, in theory, a perfectly renewable resource when managed. However, we opted for extensive ‘openpit mining’ of peat, splitting open and draining our active raised bogs and harvesting every millimeter of peat until now we are left with the “brown deserts.” So much so that in many cases we have mined our bogs right back to the Ice Age. The ‘holy grail’ now is to see if we can build back our bogs, putting Sphagnum on our cutover bogs and hoping it will grow again. If it could grow on our bogs again, then we have the potential to both build a renewable resource for industry, and return them to their function as a carbon store. Is this even possible? The very short answer is “yes,” the potential is definitely there, but it is still a massive challenge as the water levels need to be managed very precisely to do this. The word of the moment is ‘paludiculture’, or trying to get biomass growing on wet organic soils. On one of the sites I visited with the group, we went to see a small experimental section of cut-over bog where Sphagnum had been planted as a trial in 2015. There was a very small percentage success rate and only
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Autumn/Winter 2021
