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A Historical Ecology of the Bog of Allen

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Jamie Moloney 10601562 Landscapes of the Anthropocene: A Historical Ecology of the Bog of Allen Jamie Moloney 10601562 Research Master in Social Sciences (RMSS) Supervisors: Amade M’charek and Danny de Vries Universiteit van Amsterdam 15 February 2016 Submitted in Sage Harvard Reference Style for the Anthropocene Review journal 1 Jamie Moloney 10601562 Abstract One of the key problems in determining the future of the Irish landscape is the conflict of interests playing out upon its bogs between those who would utilise these hydrological relics of the past as a domestic fuel source and those who would conserve them as important habitats for both plants and animals. Through the application of historical ecology, the aim of this study is to integrate the methods of social and natural history to give historical and cultural depth to our understandings of this normatively entrenched conflict and to go some way in determining why we may see such competing views of the landscape as a possible manifestation of the Anthropocene. Introduction The Bog of Allen represents, both symbolically and materially, the largest expanse of raised bog in the Irish midlands covering an approximate area of 115,080ha (Hammond, 1979); such a vast area of bogland has been laid down over millennia, stretching as far back as the last glacial maximum (LGM) 20,000 years ago. However, it has taken a mere 200 years for human activity to reduce the Bog of Allen by over 90% (Hurley, 2005); as Viney observes: ‘the great raised bogs of the midlands are down to mere shreds and remnants…drained or scooped away for a host of different and profitable ends’ (Viney, 2003: xii). The ecological basis for such a mass exploitation of this natural resource is the fact that raised bogs are essentially layers and layers of vegetation (most particularly Sphagnum mosses) preserved in anaerobic conditions which have, over the centuries, come to form a vast resource of peat – a flammable material which is geologically known as ‘young coal’; indeed, it could be argued that it is because of a lack of coal within the geological bedrock of Ireland that peat has come to represent the fundamental domestic fuel source of the country (Viney, 2003; Mitchell and Ryan, 1997; Clarke, 2010). With the increasing population of Homo sapiens on the island – most particularly, in the case of the Bog of Allen, the expansion of Dublin – there has been a commensurate increase in pressure on the boglands as a source of energy; as fuel for the fire. Historically, the practice of ‘hand-won turf’ cutting came to be institutionalised within the legally recognised right of ‘turbary’ which is today defended vehemently by those who see the boglands as a source of fuel security; the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) being of pertinent example here. Furthermore, pressured by the lack of a domestic fuel source, the state established Bord na Móna in 1946, providing it with compulsory purchase rights to 36,735ha of the Bog of Allen in the counties of Kildare and 2 Jamie Moloney 10601562 Offaly (Hurley, 2005; Clarke, 2010). Of course, such a mass extraction of a natural resource leaves its mark on the landscape and, therefore, on the habitats of other flora and fauna; indeed, there are a great number of endangered and threatened species that depend on the boglands for their reproduction, some of them indefinitely (the ‘tyrphobionts’). Thus, species such as the Marsh Fritillary Butterfly (Euphydryas aurinia) and Greenland White-Fronted Goose (Anser albifrons flavirostris) have become symbolic creatures in the struggle for the conservation of the bogs, as exemplified by the work of the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC) and their headquarters at the Bog of Allen Nature Centre (Viney, 2003; Hurley, 2005; see map of the Bog of Allen below). The purpose of this study is to determine why, in the historical ecological development of the Bog of Allen, there has come to be a conflict of interests between these key stakeholders – the turf cutters and conservationists – and how such competing views have become manifest in the landscape. Theoretical Framework The impetus for the theoretical framework guiding this study can be attributed to an emerging intellectual movement known as the ‘Anthropocene’ – an approach that places the anthropogenic alteration of the Earth system as central to its mode of analysis and, accordingly, calls for the integration of social and natural history; indeed, ‘integrating our understanding of human history with that of the earth system is a timely and urgent task’ (Pálsson et al., 2013: 11; Zalasiewicz et al., 2011; Latour, 2014, 2015; Haraway, 2014; Armstrong and Veteto, 2015; Costanza et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2012; McCullagh, 2002). According to its advocates: ‘the new era, characterized by measurable global human impact – the so-called Anthropocene – does not just imply conflation of the natural and the social, but also a ‘radical’ change in perspective and action in terms of human awareness of and responsibility for a vulnerable earth’ (Palsson et al., 2013: 4); moreover, the tendency of modern sciences to view the ‘natural environment’ as a separate entity, as if through a lens of objectivity, ‘is itself part of the environmental problem’ (Palsson et al., 2013: 4; Latour, 2015). Whether or not one agrees with such positivistic views of science, it is necessary to embed one’s view in a materialist tradition (Haraway, 1985; Marx, 1867). Thus, I agree with Hartman (2015) in his emphasis on materiality: ‘The circumstances that have given rise to the Anthropocene concept require that we reassess our assumptions about human agency and human effects on the earth system’ (Hartman, 2015: 1; emphasis added). I therefore actively adopt a theoretical framework which address the material manifestations of human activity; one which combines both social and natural history. 3 Jamie Moloney 10601562 In order to draw out and integrate the social and ecological factors that have shaped the development of the Bog of Allen, this study adopts the theoretical precepts of historical ecology. By taking the ‘landscape’ as the fundamental unit of analysis, historical ecology will allow me to integrate the social and natural history of the Bog of Allen as I attempt to map how the historically and culturally embedded norms of property and conservation value have become manifest in the Bog of Allen landscape (Crumley, 1994, 2006a, 2006b; Marquardt and Crumley, 1987; Marx, 1844, 1867; Harvey, 1996). Following Crumley (2006a): Historical ecology traces the complex relationships between our species and the planet we live on, charted over the long term (Crumley 1987a, 1994, 1998, 2001; Balée 1998; Egan & Howell 2001)…practitioners take the term ecology to include humans as a component of all ecosystems, and the term history to include the Earth system as well as the social and physical past of our species. Historical ecologists take a holistic, practical, and dialectical perspective on environmental change and on the practice of interdisciplinary research…As a whole, this information forms a picture of human- environment relations over time in a particular geographic location (Crumley, 2006a: 16; emphasis added). Thus, the ‘landscape’ acts as the materialistic node in the dialectical and mutually constitutive interplay between humans and their environment (Crumley, 2006a, 2006b, 1994; Marx, 1844, 1867; Harvey, 1996). By taking the ‘landscape’ as the fundamental unit of analysis, then, I will be able to integrate both social and ecological analyses in one temporally and spatially fixed geographic location; in this particular case, the Bog of Allen, and the alteration of the landscape due to the extraction of peat over the centuries. Indeed, as Crumley goes on to suggest, landscapes ‘record both intentional and unintentional acts and reveal both the role of humans in the modification of the global ecosystem and the importance of past natural events in shaping human choice and action’ (Crumley, 2006: 16–17); or, as a natural historian of Ireland puts it: ‘the strata of geological and human history lie welded in the landscape’ (Viney, 2003: xi). Firmly adopting the theoretical and methodological principles of historical ecology as manifested in the ‘landscape’, then, my approach to the Bog of Allen will reflect Leopold’s view of ‘an ecological interpretation of history’, in that: ‘Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it’ (Leopold, 1989: 205). Taking this point further, it is possible to view the Bog of Allen landscape as a kind of ‘archive’. For example, McLean (2003), in his study of Céide Fields – an area of bogland in the Northwest of Ireland which, due to a series of archaeological finds, is now considered to be a significant source of historical memory, with commensurate national park status and tourist 4 Jamie Moloney 10601562 information centre – makes the point that: ‘The bog might be thought of as an archive of sorts, recording the material after-traces both of the processes of its own formation and of the generations of human settlement with which its history is intertwined’ (McLean, 2003: 50; emphasis added). McLean is not alone in this view; besides the more explicit examples of the mutually constitutive basis of social and natural history that emerge out of the bogs in the form of ‘bog bodies’ and find their way into the National Museum in Dublin (Glob, 1998; Godwin, 1981), there is a genuine epistemological shift towards viewing the boglands as nodes of historical-ecological development. Take, for instance, Malone’s (2009) conception of peatlands as both ecosystems and archives that retain significant historical-ecological data: ‘Peatland ecosystems play an important role as archives.
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