Planet’s largest blanket bog is first peatland to be designated by Unesco after 40-year campaign
As reported in the Guardian : The Flow Country, a vast and unspoiled blanket bog that carpets the far north of Scotland, has been made a world heritage site by Unesco. The planet’s largest blanket bog, the Flow Country covers about 1,500 sq miles of Caithness and Sutherland, and is the first peatland in the world to be designated by Unesco, after a 40-year campaign by environmentalists. With peat as deep as 15 metres in places, ecologists had told Unesco the Flow Country was the best example on the planet of a crucial yet threatened ecosystem; it hosts a diverse range of specialist plants and wildlife that have evolved to live on blanket bogs and peatland.
The Flow Country
The serial property, located in the Highland Region of Scotland, is considered the most outstanding example of an actively accumulating blanket bog landscape. This peatland ecosystem, which has been accumulating for the past 9,000 years, provides a diversity of habitats home to a distinct combination of bird species and displays a remarkable diversity of features not found anywhere else on Earth. Peatlands play an important role in storing carbon and the property’s ongoing peat-forming ecological processes continue to sequester carbon on a very large scale, representing a significant research and educational resource.
Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/scotland-flow-country-becomes-world-heritage-site-unesco : World Heritage website
