Clough’ wins top award

Community pride for natural heritage

In the Irish Times National Greenest Places Award at ESB Headquarters in Dublin last week the Cloughjordan Community Development Association (CCDA) won Ireland's Greenest Town or Village. The awards judging panel included former Green Party leader and former Minister for the Environment and Climate Eamon Ryan, environmental consultant and former Irish Times environment editor Kevin O’Sullivan, Irish Times senior features writer Rosita Boland, and Lisa Browne, Head of Marketing at Electric Ireland.

The award is a fantastic recognition of all the efforts, big and small, that local volunteers with Tidy Towns, Community Employment Scheme, Heritage Group, the CCDA and local landowners have undertaken to conserve and protect our under threat and irreplicable natural heritage for the generations to come. Putting our actions where our mouths are, the award recognises that movement towards addressing our biodiversity and climate emergencies isn't driven by one single change but rather by communities and individuals collectively making practical, visible progress every day. Cloughjordan community initiatives range from pollinator friendly management of roadside verges, habitat planting at the Railway Station and the Thomas MacDonagh Memorial Gardens, guided natural heritage events to biodiversity enhancement measures in Knockanacree Woodlands and peatland conservation at Scohaboy Bog SAC.

CONNECTING LOCAL ACTIONS

Connecting local actions, the CCDA have also just completed a new Community Biodiversity Action Plan for the village involving, St Michael's and No 1 Primary Schools, the faith communities of St Michaels and St Johns RC Parish, St Kierans COI, Cloughjordan Methodist Church, Kilruane MacDonagh's GAA and Camóíge Club, Cloughjordan FC and public consultation exercises with Tidy Towns. As a highly successful 'flagship' national restoration effort, Scohaboy was singled out by the judging panel for praise. In an area with no history of peatland conservation, a decade of restoration has seen the bog transition for a place of cutting and burning to conservation and all achieved without conflict.

This is testament to the depth and quality of community engagement and landowner commitment. Scohaboy is regarded as Ireland's leading community supported 'for climate, nature and people' effort involving an award winning collaboration between the CCDA, local groups, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Coillte Forest, BNM and fifty two local landowners. Today 90% of Scohaboy's 1500 acres are under conservation and rewetting measures. Scohaboy is amongst the oldest 'near-nature' landscapes in the EU, rewetting the bog 'locks-in' carbon and the measures carried out at Scohaboy includes the blocking of old drains with thousands of peat dams along with the installation of over 16 kms of specialised bunding construction by the NPWS to raise the water table across the old cutover areas in order to allow for the unique peatland ecology to reestablish and thrive. This also benefits nature by providing valuable new habitat for our threatened native bird and animal species.

Ireland’s bogs are among the most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes in western Europe and cover roughly 20% of Ireland's land surface. it is estimated that restoring Ireland’s approximately 700,000 hectares of degraded peatland could avoid up to two million tonnes of carbon emissions per year, making peatland restoration one of the most powerful nature-based climate solutions available to the country. Whilst there is so much in the wider world that local communities have no control over, local action can bring meaningful benefits both for nature and for people, a crude estimate of the carbon being 'locked-in' at Scohaboy by the rewetting programme is equivalent to taking all of Cloughjordan's cars off the road. In the adjacent Laghile and Sopwell Woodlands, there is an ongoing biodiversity enhancement planting programme and planned new trails development. The bog and the woodlands together creates a local natural heritage and climate resource of circa 2000 acres.

Cloughjordan is a great place to live and raise a family, where you can have good neighbours and a strong sense of community. There is also a real connection to nature thanks to the access infrastructure developed by the CCDA to our green spaces at Knockanacree and Scohaboy with all the valuable well-being, social and physical health benefits they offer. The award winning efforts in Cloughjordan is very much a case of 'ordinary people doing extraordinary things'!