After an almost 40-year campaign, a stunning but little-known UK landscape has been awarded world heritage status.
The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland in the far north of Scotland covers almost 2,000 sq km (469,500 acres) of one of the most intact and extensive blanket bog systems in the world.
Blanket bogs are wetland ecosystems created when peat, a soil made up of partially decayed matter, accumulates in waterlogged conditions.
Achieving world heritage status is a rare honour – particularly for a landscape. It is an internationally recognised designation awarded to places of outstanding cultural, historical, or scientific significance.
The award is made by Unesco, a UN organisation that promotes cooperation on education and science.
It means this vast tract of peat bog joins just 121 landscapes worldwide which have been awarded the designation.
Only two of these are on the UK mainland: the “Jurassic Coast” in Dorset and the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland.
As well as peatland and bogs, the Flow Country includes pools, lochs, hills and mountains covering a total of 4,000 sq km of land that stretches across virtually the whole reach of the north Highlands.
The rare blanket bog ecosystem supports a range of notable species including a host of sphagnum mosses and other wetland plants. There are all sorts of insects here too, and a host of rare birds including greenshank, golden plover, dunlin and hen harrier.
The region is home to otters and water voles as well as large numbers
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