{"id":17387,"date":"2022-06-17T08:40:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T06:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/?p=63075"},"modified":"2022-06-17T09:22:13","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T07:22:13","slug":"scotlands-flow-country-steps-closer-to-world-heritage-status","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/scotlands-flow-country-steps-closer-to-world-heritage-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland\u2019s Flow Country steps closer to World Heritage status"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Kenny Taylor\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 17 June 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The Flow Country is a vast area of peatland, studded with bog pools and lochs, that stretches across a huge expanse of the interior of Caithness and Sutherland in the north of Scotland.<\/p>\n

Formed over thousands of years, the peat here can be up to 10 metres deep, and covers an area larger than Greater London, Edinburgh and Cardiff combined.<\/p>\n

Once a battleground between conservation interests and commercial forestry, it is now recognised as internationally important for its breeding birds \u2013 such as greenshank, scarce ducks<\/a> and divers \u2013 and thick, wet blankets of carbon-storing bog mosses.<\/p>\n

A bid for the area to be awarded World Heritage status passed its first stage in 2020 by getting approval from a UK government expert panel.<\/p>\n

This summer, the Flow Country Partnership<\/a> \u2013 a coalition of many different groups \u2013 is moving to the next phase by consulting with local communities on the site\u2019s possible boundaries.<\/p>\n

The final bid, shaped by those meetings, will be assessed by UNESCO \u2013 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If successful, the Flow Country will become the world\u2019s first peatland World Heritage Site and rank alongside places such as St Kilda, the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite.<\/p>\n

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