By Helen Shaw, Tóchar Stories

I first visited and walked Abbeyleix Bog, in Co Laois, three years ago and I’ve now been lucky enough to experience it across each season and get to know its story and that of the volunteers behind it. Fiona Dunne, Chair of the Abbeyleix Bog Project, the community-led conservation group who act as custodians of the bog, describes it as  a place of restoration.“It’s a place of wild nature that has been very little, very little done to it. So it holds that sort of antiquity and that feeling of it’s just been here for so long and it’s more or less unchanged. And I just feel you almost step into that kind of living, historical landscape and I think that’s beautiful”, she says.

• WATCH: VIDEO  Fiona Dunne, Chair Abbeyleix Bog Project

The Abbeyleix Bog Project manages 500 acres that includes around 100 hectares of degraded, but improving, raised bog.Turf was harvested from the site through the mid-20th century. Today, the site’s former railway line provides an elevated walking trail and connects to a boardwalk and bog bridge built by Abbeyleix Bog Project volunteers.

• WATCH: VIDEO Bird’s Eye View of Abbeyleix Bog

The community action group began in 2000 as the Abbeyleix Residents for Environment Action (AREA) when local people came together to protect the bog from harvesting for horticultural moss. They stood up to defend the future of the bogland as a nature habitat and following negotiations with Bord Na Móna, who own the bog, a fifty year lease was signed in 2009 giving the local community the right to manage Abbeyleix Bog for nature conservation. The current legal entity, Abbeyleix Bog Project, was formed to manage that lease. They produced a Conservation Management Plan in 2013 and followed that with an independent Conservation Management Report in 2015.

The 2020 ecotope survey shows that the area of active raised bog habitat at Abbeyleix Bog has increased from 1.12 ha. in 2009 to 13.78 ha. in 2020, an increase of 1,130%. Tóchar Wetlands Restoration is supporting a new ecotope monitoring survey to provide essential data on the conservation progress.

The success of the Abbeyleix Bog Project, and its deep volunteer base,  has made it an international showcase for community-led conservation action. It’s also made it one of the most popular bog trail visits in the Midlands and that popularity as a public visitor amenity has brought its own challenges as well as rewards.

Fiona Dunne says the bog is now almost synonymous with the town itself, it’s a beloved place for locals, and visitors, to come and enjoy peace and tranquillity.  “What’s really magical for me is I feel we have so many different kinds of communities …that engage with the bog. So we have people who just come for a walk and for recreation, we have people who are just relaxing or exercising or taking it easy, appreciating nature. We have the biodiversity community, the people who come here to help us with butterfly counts and bird watching. We have the voluntary community, we have the artist community, we have the schools and the education community”.

For veteran volunteer Hugh Shepherd, a dedicated nature lover whose handiwork has created many of the wooden benches around the loop, the balance between people and nature has to be in nature’s favour. He says the price of ever increasing  visitor numbers can be the very eco-system that’s being enjoyed and protected. “I think there’s just too many people coming, you know…The people who are working here do a wonderful job looking after the paths and everything else, but there are very few people, visitors, who understand how the bog works”.  

For Fiona the key is education and deepening the educational out-reach of what’s happening in Abbeyleix.  “There is a tension, and I think that is an emerging tension. We don’t just experience it here in Abbeyleix Bog. But where wild nature and natural sites are tourist destinations we really have to look at how we do ecotourism, how we support it, how we manage it, how we plan for it and be realistic about the impacts and understand those as well. I would feel our first priority on a site as special as this has to be getting the balance right with the conservation, the amenity and then the education”.

Hugh is a scientist by training, an ecologist with a life’s experience, knowledge and insight in biodiversity and nature conservation. He is sprightly, in his 80s now, and can identify every bird sound above us, even when those sounds seem inaudible to me, and he knows and monitors the 600 species of moth found there. As well as crafting benches, he takes care of cameras monitoring animal life (there’s three species of deer found around the landscape) and his nature photography is on many of the public information signs. He has been actively involved since 2012 and helped with the boardwalk, becoming part of the volunteer crews clearing trees and invasive species like rhododendron. “I came down because it was a lovely place to come to…so I just went along and joined in, basically, and I’ve been doing it ever since”, he says, pointing out brimstone butterflies emerging after hibernation and fluttering along our loop walk; with the sound of woodpeckers in the trees.

To find out more about the Abbeyleix Bog Project, to volunteer or request a guided educational walk with a volunteer go to the website https://www.abbeyleixbog.ie and if you do visit do enjoy this magical landscape but do take all your waste, including dog poo, away with you when you leave.

Connected Stories:

• LISTEN: RADIO Tóchar Stories mentor artist Annie Holland, a volunteer with the Abbeyleix Bog Project and part of the Community Wetlands Forum artists and wetlands public engagement featured on RTÉ Radio 1 Countrywide
• WATCH: TV: For Peat’s Sake, RTÉ documentary featuring Fiona Dunne and her father on their own family’s relationship to the boglands. 

Connect with Tóchar Stories and follow its community engagement storytelling through its Instagram @tocharstories