For any other French-speaking reader wondering as I did (because speaking English is one thing, but knowing all the botanical lingo is really something else), a peat bog is what we call a "tourbière".

And FYI a peaty whiskey is a whiskey tourbé :)

Now I'm wondering what will be found in the bog? Bogs have an interesting effect of preserving things like bodies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body

Not that they're related, but I'm also wondering what Congolese single malt will taste like?

I imagine finding stuff is going to be pretty tough in such a large area - but it'll sure be interesting.

This has serious potential to be a very nasty source of CO2 emissions and habitat loss if they decide to industrialise it.

Never mind industrialise. If they chop the trees down for lumber, as seems to be the destiny for all tropical forests, the soil will dry, and microbes will be able to start decomposing the biotic material currently locked up in an anaerobic environment. This has already been seen in Norfolk in the UK, where they increased drainage and removed ground cover, and ever since, the peat has emanted vast amounts of CO2 as ground levels fall by inches a year due to conversion of the solid matter into decomposition products (methane, CO2, etc.)

Indonesia is also a pretty bad example - see Willie Smits' talk on conservation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYLAXkenFw

The dutch burnt a lot of peat in the old days. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-...

This amaze me that we're still discovering places on earth !

African Whisky

Just in case anyone is wondering - whisky isn't made from peat, it is made from malted barley that was often dried over a peat fire and this very distinctive aroma was imparted to the malt and then to the spirit.

NB When I was as student I used to have a summer job in a maltings that made malt from barley that was used by a number of distilleries. Note that most maltings are actually fairly large industrial plants - not really the normal image people have of the Scots whisky industry although lots of higher end distilleries do make their own malt.

Saying that, supplies of highland & Islay peat are dwindling - in a few hundred years they won't be using local peat to dry out the barley

I don't think there is any lack of peat in Scotland - I guess what there is a lack of is areas where people are happy to ruin the landscape to harvest peat.

e.g. The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_Country