Peatlands once accounted for 14.3% of the landscape of County Kildare but the majority of Irish peatlands have been converted to other uses such as industrial peatland, agricultural land, afforested and cutover peatland. These are emitting greenhouse gases and contributing to climate change. The climate crisis means that land managers and individuals need to work together from all sectors to not only restore the carbon sequestration function in peatlands but to protect the carbon stocks in peatland and prevent further degradation. Without restoration of the hydrological and ecological functioning of peatlands climate change itself will accelerate further loss of peatland sites. As the emmisions from damaged peatlands and the carbon savings from peatland restoration are eligible for national carbon accounting under the UN Framework Convention on Climate change there is an oportunity for Ireland to inlcude peatland restoration and rewetting in the national climate action plans. County Kildare should also seriously look at the oportunity that has arisen from the end of industrial peat extraction which is leaving a large land bank available for consevation at a landscape scale which has to this time been un-available and a serious hinderence to proper conservation. The development of a National Peatlands Park would bolster and improve County Kildare's efforts in combatting climate change and strengthen all it's efforts in reversing biodiversity loss.