The environmental group that petitioned the European Commission to ensure peatland preservation today gave a guarded welcome to the publication of three documents by Minister Jimmy Deenihan – the draft National Peatlands Strategy, draft National Raised Bog Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) Management Plan, and a Review of Raised Bog Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs).
‘The Minister and the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the consultancy involved are to be commended for the work that has gone into these documents. If this work had been done in 1997 when the legislation came into place, the violent confrontations that we have witnessed on the bogs over the last two years could have been avoided. The Plan shows that of the SAC network’s 1990 ha in 1994, more than 730 ha were been destroyed by 2012.’
