Police rescue four Cologne women from Bavarian bog

Police rescued four women from Cologne and their dog after they became lost and sank to their knees in the Premer Filz, an intact raised bog in the Upper Bavarian district of Weilheim-Schongau, BR reported on Wednesday.

The group had been walking away from marked paths when one of the women called emergency services on Tuesday. She said they had taken a wrong turn and lost their bearings. Police located them using mobile phone tracking.

Officers led the women and the dog out of the bog to safe ground. No one was injured, and a police spokesman said the group had not been in danger of death at any point.

Bogs become particularly dangerous when someone sinks to chest level, making it difficult to escape without help. People cannot sink completely because bog mud is denser than the human body, but the cold mud can cause the body to cool quickly.

Bavaria has about 228,000 hectares of peatland, more than half of which is used for agriculture and forestry, according to the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture. Drainage, peat extraction and water removal for crops and intensive grassland farming are causing many bog landscapes to disappear. Peatlands also store large amounts of carbon and provide habitats for rare plants and animals, prompting projects to protect them.