Discover how support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has helped kickstart change for nature.
From degraded landscape to World Heritage Site, we look at how a partnership in the Flow Country, Scotland, is transforming a rare peatland landscape and helping to pass on valuable conservation skills and knowledge.
For the last three decades, the National Lottery has supported the RSPB and many other good causes to bring positive change to communities and nature. To celebrate this milestone, we are highlighting how generous funding, thanks to lottery players, has supported game-changing projects tackling the nature and climate crisis across the UK. This includes funding for the Flows to the Future programme in Scotland which has helped create an outstanding legacy.
The Flow Country, which includes RSPB Forsinard Flows in Caithness and Sutherland, was recognised as a World Heritage Site in July, becoming the first ever peat bog in the world to be awarded this status. Behind the headlines of this high-profile accolade is decades of transformational partnership working across the Flows Country landscape. Much of this was kick-started thanks to support from National Lottery players through the National Lottery Heritage Funded Flows to the Future programme.
Running from 2014 to 2019, the Flows to the Future programme restored large areas of the Flow Country blanket bog, an internationally rare form of peatland, involving and connecting people everywhere with this precious habitat.
In the 1970s, vast areas of peatland habitats were destroyed or damaged through the drainage and planting of commercial conifer plantations. A large part of the restoration work has involved removing thousands of trees, with over 2,600 hectares of inappropriate plantation forestry removed so far.
Peatland in good condition is a thriving home for many rare and threatened plants and wildlife, such as Common Scoters, Golden Plovers, Hen Harriers and carnivorous sundew plants. They are also an important store of carbon, equivalent to a tropical rainforest, making them an important natural mechanism to fight climate change.
A residential volunteering centre was established during the programme and today offers hands-on volunteering experiences. It attracts people of all ages and abilities from across the globe looking to gain new skills whilst learning about this amazing landscape.
Heather Corrigan’s residential volunteering experience put her in the best position to apply for and be successfully appointed as the Peatland Restoration Field Officer with the RSPB Forsinard team. Here she describes her experience:
“Since I started, I have been immersed figuratively and literally in all things bog! I’ve carried out surveys for protected species, mended fences, wielded bog bubblers and giant hammers and practiced the zen art of reviewing camera trap footage.”
Eleanor, who joined as a residential volunteer, describes her experience:
“After a 19-hour train journey I arrived at Forsinard at 21:42. I was instantly struck by how dark it was. There is no light pollution here and it was a beautiful cloudless night. The stars were breathtaking! During my first week I helped with the diver raft maintenance and trail checks, and was introduced to the feeding wader counts that we did weekly from March to July.
“Feeding wader counts (counts of wading birds) are the best all weather survey. You just jump in the truck and it acts as a mobile hide as you survey the fields at the side of the road. When I first came up to Forsinard, one of the things that was at the top of my list was seeing a Golden Plover for the first time. I didn’t expect to see them so soon or so near the road!”
RSPB Forsinard Flows also offers accessible peatland experiences for day visitors thanks to the now iconic and award-winning lookout tower and boardwalk installed on the Dubh Lochan trail at the reserve as part of the partnership programme. This enables thousands of visitors a year to accessibly experience the spectacular wildness close up.
Restoration of the blanket bog continues, with private and public funding supporting ongoing restoration efforts and innovative financial mechanisms now being trialled. The partnership remains strong and the Flow Country Partnership has also recently become an official charity – securing the future of this amazing partnership working and landscape for many years to come.
