Clara Bog

Clara Bog is one of the largest relatively intact raised bogs remaining in Ireland. It lies southeast of the R436 regional road between the village of Ballycumber and the town of Clara, in County Offaly. Much of the bog is state-owned and managed as a nature reserve covering some 460 ha. A Special Area of Conservation covers 836 ha.

History

The bog was formed in a depression, originally a shallow lake, at the end of the last ice age. An esker left by retreating glaciers cut off drainage to the north (the river Brosna catchment). Although usually classed as a relatively intact bog, it has been negatively affected by peat extraction and by the construction of the Clara to Rahan road in the late 18th century. The bog subsided up to six meters following bisection by the road and associated drainage. The dome structure of the bog was also changed by the road, leaving two domes, a western one and an eastern one.

In the early 1980s, Clara Bog East was drained for potential industrial peat extraction, but public requests were made to the Irish Government to preserve the area by a number of international naturalists, David Bellamy among them. In 1987, both the Dutch and Irish Governments signed a technical agreement for co-operation in the area of peatland management and restoration. Clara Bog was chosen as one of the study sites and partly converted into a nature reserve. The industrial development was stopped and existing drains were blocked. Its status and development since the last ice age concerning flora and hydrology has since been extensively studied. In 1988 it was designated a Ramsar Site. Clara Bog and Raheenmore Bog (also in County Offaly) have been twinned with Bargerveen Nature Reserve, a Dutch Ramsar Site, under the European Natural Sites Twinning Programme (Eurosite).

Clara

Clara may refer to:

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People

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Other uses

Clara (Mirbeau)

Clara is the main character in the French Novel The Torture Garden ((French) Le Jardin des supplices, 1899), by Octave Mirbeau.

A free woman

Clara, who has no last name or civil status, is an English woman with red hair and green eyes--“a greyish green of the young fruits of the almond tree.” Single, rich and bisexual, Clara lives in near Canton, and leads an idle existence, entirely devoted to finding perverse pleasures. She is fully emancipated, financially and sexually, and freed from oppressive laws and taboos prevailing in the West and which, according to her critique of anarchist inspiration, prohibit the development of the individual. Clara thus claims to enjoy complete freedom. She particularly enjoys visiting the city prison every week, which is open to tourists on Wednesday. Clara delights in watching the death row inmates, many of whom are innocent or guilty of minor offenses, being brutally tortured and put to death.

This protagonist meets the anonymous narrator, a petty political crook, aboard the Saghalien, where the pseudo-embryologist was sailing to Ceylon, as part of an official mission. In reality, his primary goal is just to distance himself from France. She seduces him, awakening his sexual desire along with the need to unburden himself, and becomes his mistress. She takes him with her to China, where both the narrator and Clara share a lover, Annie.

Clara (TV series)

Clara is a German television series.

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