EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Chapter 5: Land and Soil Topic Box 5.4 Some Developments in Protecting and Managing Peatlands n The Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2016 was proceeding through the Houses of the Oireachtas. The bill lapsed on 14 January 2020 with the dissolution of the Dáil and Seanad. n The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is restoring active raised bogs at 12 SACs 7 and plans to restore over 1800 hectares at up to nine raised bog-designated sites across seven counties in 2020, with funding in the 2020 budget for peatland restoration increased to €5 million. n The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has completed restoration measures on state lands at a further three raised bog SACs and one raised bog NHA since 2018, with the restoration of state-owned land within a number of other protected raised bogs currently being planned. n Restoration plans for the network of raised bog NHAs are due for completion in 2020. n Bogs where peat extraction activities licensed by the EPA are currently under way will be rehabilitated when extraction has ceased. n In September 2019, the High Court ruled that the 2019 European Union (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Peat Extraction) Regulations and the Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) Regulations 2019 should be set aside, following a successful legal challenge. The decision means that peat cannot be extracted from areas larger than 30 hectares. n The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is preparing regulations for smaller scale peat extraction activities. n The SWAMP project 8 is aiming to improve water quality in managed peatlands. n The Smart Bog project 9 is assessing the impacts of human activities on greenhouse gas emissions and removals from peatlands ecosystems, using high-quality imagery and satellite data. n The NEROS project (Renou-Wilson et al. , 2018) involves the monitoring of rewetted and restored peatlands for climate and biodiversity benefits (for both raised and blanket bogs). n The Raised Bog EU LIFE project has been under way since 2016. n The AUGER project 10 is currently assessing peatland properties influencing greenhouse gas emissions/removals. Forestry Forests are expected to play a bigger role as carbon reservoirs in the future, but environmental assessments are necessary to ensure that the right types of forest are planted and developed in the right places and are managed correctly, to avoid wider impacts on our environment. Forests provide us with renewable sources of fuel and raw materials. In addition to supporting our economy, they have many important environmental functions, including water regulation, biodiversity conservation, recreation, and improved health and wellbeing. They play an important role in climate change by removing CO 2 from the atmosphere. Ireland’s national forest estate is an important carbon reservoir, amounting to over 3.82 million tonnes of CO 2 in 2018 (EPA, 2020a). Ireland’s forests and wood products have removed, on average, 4.26 million tonnes of CO 2 per year from the atmosphere since 1990 7 www.raisedbogs.ie 8 https://www.ucd.ie/swamp/ 9 http://www.smartbog.com/ 10 https://www.ucd.ie/auger/ and are expected to contribute significantly to meeting Ireland’s 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target under the Effort Sharing Regulations and the Climate Action Plan 2019. Ireland’s Climate Action Plan (Government of Ireland, 2019) commits to increasing afforestation to an average of 8000 hectares each year, to reach a national forestry land cover target of 18 per cent by the second half of this century. The target for new forestation is to plant about 440 million trees over the next 20 years. The plan also includes several actions covering the forest sector, including implementing the Forestry Programme 2014- 2020 in line with the recommendations and targets of the mid-term review of the programme (DAFM, 2018a). Other actions aim to increase the productivity and resilience of the national forest estate and tree species, to deliver additional carbon sequestration potential. 113