LULLYMORE, Ireland – For centuries, the Irish have used swamp peat as fuel for their home fires. The story of a family coming together to take home a ‘lawn’, as it is called peat in Ireland, evokes pastoral memories of a poor but simpler life on the land. But now the Irish government is moving to limit the use of peat in the name of fighting climate change, protecting habitats and improving air quality. it’s not easy.
Ireland has one of the rarest habitats in the world and, according to scientists, the most effective landform for sequestering carbon on Earth, in peatlands known as raised marshes in the European Union. There is more than half the remaining area.
“The wetlands are the Amazon rainforest. They’re where most of our carbon is stored,” said botanist and author Eanna Ny Ramna.
But despite national and European law banning lawn mowing in many swamps, Ireland has so far insisted on exercising what it sees as its traditional right to mowing. It has been proven that people cannot or do not want to be stopped.
Last week, the European Commission warned Ireland that it must do more to protect its peatlands, citing discussions on regulation that began more than a decade ago. In its report, the Commission said Irish citizens had openly ignored laws restricting the logging of protected wetlands, and even those laws were too lax to meet Europe’s goals.
The Irish government now has two months to put a brake on the law and say how it will be implemented or face a hefty fine at the European Court of Justice.
Meanwhile, on October 31, new regulations designed to improve air quality will ban the sale of smoky fuels, including turf. The government hopes this will reduce public demand. However, turf remains freely available through unofficial channels, and rising fuel costs, largely due to cuts in Russia’s gas supplies to Europe, have made peat even more attractive as a fuel source.
One in seven Irish households depends at least partially on peat for heat. Ireland’s MEP Luke Flanagan collects his own lawn from his family’s plot after it has been mechanically mowed by his contractor. He says 500 euros will get you a winter lawn mower.
The trade is largely unregulated, but lawn mowing this summer is at its peak as families and private contractors rush to stockpile turf ahead of the October ban, which many feared would be tougher. It is widely reported to have reached high tide.
Michael Fitzmaurice, MP and president of the Association of Lawn Mowers and Contractors, said peat use could increase this winter as global energy supplies tighten and prices soar. It is often small farmers in rural areas, the poor and the elderly who rely on lawns for heating. “The war in Ukraine makes fuel security more important than ever,” Fitzmaurice said. “Now is not the time to run people out of fuel.”
Peatlands, including wetlands, cover less than 3% of the world’s land surface, Stores twice as much carbon as the world’s forests“Forests sequester carbon five times more efficiently than forests,” says Mattis Schuten, a Dutch ecologist who studies swamps in Ireland. “So it’s not very wise to dig swamps for fuel.”
The very word bog comes from the Irish bogach, or ‘soft place’, and 17% of Ireland’s 27,000 square miles of land was originally covered with peatlands. Mostly drained for grazing and forestry or felled for fuel, only a quarter of him is in good condition for preservation or restoration. This includes both the raised bogs common in the flat Midlands and the ‘blanket bogs’ that form in highlands and coastlines. Ireland’s land area is less than 0.5% but accounts for 2.6% of all wetlands.
Manchan Magan, an Irish-language author acclaimed in a recent television series about Ireland’s bog heritage, said that turf is a relatively poor source of heat compared to wood and coal, making it a major fuel in Ireland. He says it was only in the 18th century. By that time, much of Ireland’s natural forests had been cut down, and many poor peasants who subsisted primarily on their potato crops did not have the cash to buy other fuels.
Their landlords, eager to keep tenants on overcrowded land at exorbitant rents, gave them the right to cut peat from otherwise worthless swamps. Some rural families still retain an inherited right to mow lawns from certain bogs.
The lawn mowing culture has taken root in older generations as a symbol of rural self-sufficiency. In Verdelig, County Mayo, far west of Ireland, retired archeology professor Seamus Caulfield shows us how the turf is traditionally mowed. Using a traditional sulian, or right-angled spade, he cuts long, heavy rectangles of muddy turf, or turf, from the open banks of his family’s blanketbogs, throws them onto high ground, and spins them. , drying and stacking were repeated. until ready to burn.
“My son and I are the few people around here who still cut by hand,” said Mr. Caulfield, taking a break from the heavy lifting.
In the 1930s, his father, schoolteacher Patrick Caulfield, made an unusual discovery while mowing the lawn. The stone rows he found under the moors turned out to be field walls, relics of a hitherto unknown sophisticated Neolithic farming culture that predates the pyramids of Egypt. . When the climate cooled 5,000 years ago, the walls were submerged in swamps. The area, known as Said Field, is now a major historic site.
Faced with the threat of European Union penalties for failing to adequately protect swamps, the Irish government ‘strongly contends’ that the EU has not given due consideration to the investments and resources it is putting into swamp conservation. ‘ said. Since 2011, we have reduced the amount of lawn mowing.
With financial support from the European Union, Ireland also aims to restore and protect thousands of acres of raised marshes. Many of them have been “rewetted” and turned into tourist attractions and nature reserves. Once widely viewed as little more than desolate wastelands, swamps are now recognized as essential havens for biodiversity. It also acts as a natural water filter and flood control, absorbing rain and slowly releasing it during drought.
In Larimor, County Kildare, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council is restoring the historic Lodge Bog and damming a drainage ditch that had been dried out for logging. First growing 10,000 years ago, the wetlands are home to more than 150 species of plants and 186 species of birds, mammals and insects, including hares, foxes, butterflies, larks and about 47 species of spiders. I’m here.
Council Education Officer Paula Farrell stood on a wooden walkway built into the surface of the bog and pointed out signs of healthy, living peatland – bright clusters of yellow bog asphodel, crossed Purple flowers of foliage heather, tufts of white bog cotton. “Drained peat will leak carbon when it dries, but if it is re-wet, the donor can pick the live moss from the site and replant it in the bare areas of the bog,” says Farrell. increase. “Once established, the swamp will start growing again.”