26th July: Scotland to have world’s first peatland UNESCO World Heritage site

The Flow Country has become the UK’s newest UNESCO World Heritage Site, having been granted the accolade today, at the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee.

The landscape, which is widely considered to be the largest area of blanket bog in the world covering around 1,500 square miles in Caithness and Sutherland, has become the UK’s 35th UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the world’s first ever peatland site to gain world heritage status.

The site will also become Scotland’s first natural world heritage site and joins a very exclusive list of natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including The Grand Canyon and The Great Barrier Reef.

It will be the seventh Scottish site, joining St Kilda and the Forth Bridge, which attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Scotland.

Due to the nature of the site, this listing is also expected to bring new opportunities for local people through the creation of green jobs in landscape restoration and conservation.

The Flow Country is home to a wide range of wetland and moorland species, including many birds, such as the red-throated diver, golden eagle and short-eared owl and has been considered to be of outstanding universal value due to its remarkable diversity, the home that it provides for these species and the role it plays in storing approximately 400 million tonnes of carbon in the north of Scotland.

The news follows the announcement of Gracehill in Northern Ireland receiving World Heritage Status, making this the second new addition to the list of UK World Heritage Sites today.