Black Bog RAMSAR

Black Bog is situated in County Tyrone and is one of the largest lowland raised bogs in Northern Ireland. The raised bog, which covers most of the site exhibits the full range of characteristic vegetation and structural features associated with this type of habitat and is surrounded by cut-over bog with poor fen.

The Ramsar site boundary is entirely coincident with both that of the Black Bog Area of Special Scientific Interest and the Black Bog Special Area of Conservation.

The site qualifies under criterion 1a of the Ramsar Convention by being a particularly good representative example of lowland raised bog. In western Europe most of the relatively intact raised bogs occur in the UK and Ireland.

This site is one of the two largest intact active bogs in Northern Ireland with hummock and hollow complexes and represents one of the best examples of this habitat type in the UK.

The area is also of special interest because of the quality of its vegetation.
The site is especially important for its extensive hummock-hollow complex, high cover of Sphagnum species and largely intact lagg. There are some very large Sphagnum hummocks including Sphagnum imbricatum and Sphagnum fuscum.

Another feature of the bog surface is the occurrence of an unusual plant community with locally high cover of common crowberry and large hummocks of the lichen Cladonia portentosa.