The Flow Country is located across Caithness and Sutherland. It is home to a vast expanse of seemingly deserted land. Yet, it was recognised as the world’s first peatland World Heritage Site for its blanket bog ecosystem in July 2024. Considering purely natural criteria, it is Scotland’s only World Heritage Site, and one of only three natural sites in mainland United Kingdom.
At first glance, the landscape may appear bleak and uninhabited. Peatlands, bogs, ponds, hills and mosses stretch as far as the eye can see but underneath the seemingly quiet surface, coexists a complex ecosystem of plants and animals.
Peatlands: a landscape formed over centuries
Peat is formed slowly over centuries from plants that die and accumulate in waterlogged and acidic conditions, which prevent them from decaying completely, as they would do elsewhere. This phenomenon causes peat to act like a sponge, trapping carbon in the ground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. In essence, they function like a massive carbon store. Damage to boglands means not just losing a valuable storage site for carbon but it also turns them into a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The balance that maintains the whole ecosystem in place is fragile. Water depletion is the key cause of damage. Climate change causing prolonged dry weather spells, drainage, erosion, forestry, farming and land exploitation also all affect peatlands.
The dilemma of balance
Ironically, the move towards renewable energy can also contribute to the degradation of this precious environment. Wind power is one of the examples that illustrate this issue. An important source of clean energy, the location and the infrastructure involved in the installation of wind turbines requires roads, foundations and drainage. Some experts, like Marjoleine Kopmeiners, a conservation advisor for the Flow Country Partnership, believe that the implementation of these wind farms can endanger peatlands and therefore requires careful planning. “Nature works at her own pace and recovery is slow” says Kopmeiners.
Challenges faced by the Flow Country Partnership
Originally created in 2006, the Flow Country Partnership adopted its current form as a charitable organisation in 2024, ahead of securing UNESCO World Heritage status later that same year. Its stated aim is to bring together a community including crofters, farmers, landowners/managers, local businesses, residents, ecologists and local government to grow the resilience of the Flow Country and its people. It works alongside public bodies involved in peatland restoration, with projects subject to monitoring and longer-term management requirements.
According to Kopmeiners, there is no single restoration technique for peatlands since the causes of degradation vary. In parts of the Flow Country, the main problem is artificial drainage. Elsewhere, erosion has created bare peat and gullies. Some areas were planted with commercial conifers decades ago, while other areas have been affected by grazing pressure, deer or severe weather.
Restoring peatlands
The first step experts working with the Flow Country Partnership take is usually to assess a specific area within the bog. Restoration teams often work with what is known as a hydrological unit: essentially a section of landscape within a natural water system. The objective is to restore the functioning of that whole system rather than treating isolated patches. Sometimes the answer is simply to encourage vegetation to return. In other places, the priority is to slow the movement of water.
One of the most common techniques is surprisingly simple: building peat dams. “Healthy peat is dense and malleable”, explains Kopmeiners. It allows restoration workers to construct barriers across drainage channels. These slow the movement of water and help re-establish the wet conditions necessary for peatland vegetation.
Other sites may require timber structures or different interventions. The work is carried out using large excavators fitted with wide tracks, which spread the machines’ weight over a larger area and thereby reduce pressure on the fragile soil. Once the machinery is removed, restoration becomes a waiting game. The restored area is monitored for several years. Teams check whether dams are holding, whether erosion is occurring and whether grazing animals are putting excessive pressure on recovering vegetation.
“Some interventions will fail”, says Kopmeiners. But she argues this is more a part of working with a living ecosystem rather than a reason to abandon restoration. It is significantly easier to restore a bog than to start one from scratch. The aim is to ensure that by the fifth and tenth years, the project has reached an acceptable level of recovery. In her point of view, this long-term perspective is essential when working with peatlands.
Finding a win-win strategy for restoring peatlands
Another important service undertaken by the Flow County Partnership is to find a viable compromise with estates and farms who have traditionally depended on the land for grazing, farming, sporting activities and forestry. Environmental arguments alone do not suffice to make restoration attractive to landowners.
Making restoration economically viable while maintaining sustainable land management is a huge challenge. The emerging carbon market is one part of that equation, and the Flow Country Partnership has established a commercial arm, Flow Country Restoration Ltd, to address this issue. Rather than simply charging landowners for the work, the organisation takes ownership of a proportion of the carbon credits generated by restoration projects which then help finance future monitoring and maintenance. The model is designed to provide a source of income that can keep restoration work going beyond an individual grant.
Kopmeiners is careful to point out that the partnership does not simply sell carbon credits to the highest bidder. As a charitable organisation, it applies a screening process intended to ensure that buyers are taking steps to reduce their own emissions. The principle is that carbon credits should address emissions that cannot reasonably be eliminated, rather than allowing companies to use them as an alternative to reducing their own environmental impact.
Finding a balance with farming and deer management
Restoration does not necessarily mean removing people or animals from the landscape. Kopmeiners believes that sheep, livestock and deer remain part of the rural economy and ecology, and the objective is not to eliminate populations that prevent peatland recovery entirely. Restoration plans can be adapted to account for animal behaviour. If deer repeatedly congregate in a particular area, for example, restoration can be designed around that pressure. Monitoring provides another safeguard. Survey plots can be established across restoration sites and revisited over many years to assess vegetation and grazing impacts. The Partnership operates on the principle of balance rather than exclusion according to Kopmeiners.
Finding ways for interests to coexist
The challenges faced in restoring peatlands raise fundamental questions about how Scotland should pursue the transition away from fossil fuels while protecting the ecosystems that help to both address climate change and protect local economies.
The answer is unlikely to be found in treating environmental issues as competing and isolated causes. Wind and solar power can reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Peatlands can store carbon and provide a habitat for many species of life. Agriculture supports rural communities. Estates and landowners need viable businesses. Local communities need jobs and investment. The challenge is finding ways for these interests to coexist and to determine the right balance, allowing the ecosystem to function properly within these constraints.
The Flow Country peatlands clearly illustrate what is at stake. The key question now is whether Scotland can protect and restore this ancient and invaluable resource so it can continue doing what it has done for centuries: holding carbon in the ground, while simultaneously safely supporting both a transition to renewable energy and the intricate complexity of the web of life above it.
