VIDEO: See local children exploring Carn Park Bog in Baylin

A local heritage group has this week shared an interesting and well-made video exploring the history and features of Carn Park Bog in Baylin, near Athlone. 

Mount Temple Baylin Heritage Group shared the video on its Facebook page yesterday (Sunday) in celebration of Biodiversity Week 2020. 

The 11-minute video sees children from St Ciaran's National School, Baylin, and An Grianan NS, Mount Temple, paying a visit to the bog, where its importance and distinctive feature are explained by Therese Kelly, a Conservation Ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service. 

"The habitat (in raised bogs) is a unique thing. Because it's 10,000 years in the making, this is not something that we can artificially recreate in our lifetime or in the generation to follow, or the one after that,"explained Therese. 

She also spoke about the importance of raised bogs in the efforts to counteract climate change. 

"We have learned in more recent decades that keeping these bogs preserved is actually great to help try and balance our climate issues that we're experiencing at the moment.... These raised bogs are storing more carbon than all of our woodlands put together."  

In addition, the video sees archaeologist Dr Eoin Sullivan speaking about the preserved wooden trackways, wooden artefacts, and containers for bog butter which have been found in our bogs. 

The Mount Temple Baylin Heritage Group thanked Westmeath County Council's Heritage Office and Creative Ireland for their support in funding the making of its heritage videos in 2019.

You can watch the video about Carn Park Bog here: