The Garron Plateau is the biggest intact area of blanket bog in Northern Ireland. Because of this, the area is designated as an SAC and RAMSAR site due to its draw for breeding wading birds. NI Water own a large section of the Plateau (over 2000 hectares), which releases water from the bog to our Dungonnell reservoir that supplies drinking water to 4,300 people.
In 2016, it was recognised after a habitat condition assessment by NIEA that the condition of the bog was in an ‘unsatisfactory’ condition i.e. it was not functioning in an anaerobic way as a bog should, it was drying out and the peatland which provides a slow filter for water entering the reservoir as well as a home to thousands of animals bords and plants was being slowly destroyed. The area was also subject to overgrazing at that time, which degraded the remaining peat even more.
An initial peatland restoration project was launched in 2013 under the ‘Futurescapes’ project led by NI Water, to simply block up the bog drains in 74 hectares which had been dug through the area, and reduce the number of sheep grazing. In total, 1,120 dams were used to block these drains to slowly rewet the area, encouraging waterlogging and the sphagnum moss to begin colonising again.
In 2017, the Co-operation Across Borders for Biodiversity (CABB) project led by RSPBNI with NI Water as partner was initiated with the aim of restoring a much larger further area of peatland.
A large area of the Supported by the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), CABB was a €4.9m five-year partnership led by RSPB NI and involving RSPB Scotland, Birdwatch Ireland, Butterfly Conservation, Moors for the Future and Northern Ireland Water. The Garron Plateau bog restoration project benefitted from this partnership after obtaining funding in 2017 for a bog restoration project at Garron Plateau.
The aim of CABB was to improve habitats at some of our most precious wetland sites, with added benefits for water quality and eventually carbon offsetting and in-setting potential.
This larger-scale project involved the blocking of drains in 493 hectares of bog between 2018 and 2019, with more than 1,000 dams. Peat began to actively revegetate and rewet, attenuating flow to WTWs and slowing erosion. Raw water quality benefits up to present (August 2024) include mean turbidity decrease of 31.23%, mean TOC decrease of 3.60% and mean colour decrease of 6.57%.
The CABB project delivered under budget and ahead of schedule, and was subject to a significant Natural Capital assessment Valuing Our Peatlands, which detailed that for every £1 spent on Garron, natural capital benefits worth £3.91 would be realised.
The upcoming third phase of peatland restoration on the Dungonnell catchment is the first site in Northern Ireland to have been registered under The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Peatland Carbon Code, and through the restoration of 5 landscape compartments, the 30-year programme will achieve a Net Emissions reduction of 55,030 tonnes of carbon, leading to a Claimable Emissions Reduction (potential offsetting/insetting) of 46,775 tonnes of carbon equivalent (NI Water's net operational carbon output in 2023 was 41,576 tonnes of carbon equivalent).
Celebrating the brilliance of bogs
Garron Plateau bog restoration project