Prepared by Dr Catherine O’Connell, Chair, Irish Peatland Society Following on from previous years, the Peatland Road Trip 2025 organised by the Irish Peatland Society was based on the theme of Agriculture and the involvement of local people in peatland management. Thirty members participated in a three day programme. They visited eight peatland sites where landowners are engaged in farming and managing water levels within the peat soils for the benefit of biodiversity, habit

Members of the Irish Peatland Society learned how to use the Peatland Score Card shown below to assess the habitat quality of a blanket bog site used for farming in terms of biodiversity, hydrology and threats. On the basis of the score applied a farmer is paid. Where negative scores are applied a farmer can intervene by blocking drains or removing invasive Rhododendron ponticum after appropriate skills training. Such actions improve the overall score for the habitat and the

Prepared by Dr Catherine O’Connell, Chair, Irish Peatland Society The Peatland Road Trip 2024 organised by the Irish Peatland Society was based on the theme of agriculture. Forty members participated on a two day programme. They visited five peatland sites where innovative work and research is being undertaken to develop farming techniques that help contribute to protecting soil carbon, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing wetland habitat quality. The sites visited

“It was the best of peatlands, it was the worst of peatlands, it was the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, it was the Peatlands...

Following our Peatlands Gathering event, where else can those with an interest in peat find more information and meet like-minded...

Peatlands Gathering was delighted to have Minister of State for Heritage & Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan TD deliver the keynote address...

‘Treasure’ is a short film commissioned by Offaly Arts for Culture Night, 2021 which features a selection of bog poetry by Eileen Casey...

Dr Phoebe Morton, an ecosystem scientist formerly of the Source To Tap project writes on the Meenbog Peat Slide in Co Donegal last year

Artist Jo Killalea's paintings capture an essence of the peatland landscape of her home in the West of Ireland and were recently...

Prof Laurence Gill, of Trinity College Dublin, is principal investigator on the EPA-funded research project, EcoMetrics, developing...

Here Dr Florence Renou-Wilson, Principal Investigator & Director of the MSc Programme in Global Change: Ecosystem Science and Policy at...

Dr Florence Renou-Wilson, Principal Investigator & Director of the MSc Programme in Global Change: Ecosystem Science and Policy at the...

The GP3 campaign to restore damaged peatlands is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Peatlands Initiative and...

Emma Gray, Heather Lally and Giovanni Cappelli of the Marine and Freshwater Research Centre, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, on...

Ellen O Carroll, Post Doctoral Researcher in Archaeology, UCD School of Archaeology and foodcult.eu writes about the amazing discoveries...

Pics of bogland, a near-natural raised bog, a site that has been drained and peat extracted, then a site rewetted in the Smartbog project

Dr Catherine A. Farrell, pictured below right, leader of the Peatlands Gathering 2021 organising committee, writes: The Peatlands...