Curran Bog ASSI

Curran Bog occurs in the flood-plain of the Moyola River. Despite extensive turf-cutting around its edge, the remaining intact surface retains a high cover of Sphagnum bog-mosses (indicating active peat growth) and well-developed surface patterning (i.e. pool, hummock and hollow complexes).
The pool system is a particularly important feature, as these are generally very rare in Northern Ireland lowland raised bogs. The pools vary in shape and size, but are generally linear with a carpet of aquatic Sphagnum bog-mosses, particularly Sphagnum cuspidatum, with lesser amounts of Sphagnum auriculatum and scattered bogbean.
Notable species include great sundew, Sphagnum pulchrum, Sphagnum imbricatum and Sphagnum fuscum.
The cutover area is extensive and has a range of secondary vegetation types, which support a variety of plant and animal communities. The old peat-cuttings around the edge of the intact surface are in differing stages of infilling and show habitat succession after cutting, with areas of scrub, open water pools, regenerating bog vegetation, acid fen and even base-rich swamp and fen. Curran Bog is also important for invertebrates. There are large numbers of recently-created acid pools, which show few signs of enrichment and support an aquatic fauna typical of acid and base-poor waters. The recorded fauna includes seven species of dragonfly, eight aquatic Heteroptera (true bugs) and twenty-three species of water beetle.

Site Related Documents

Site map (.PDF 1.05Mb), Citation document (.PDF 150Kb) and Views about Management document (.PDF 50Kb).