UNESCO World Heritage · Scottish Highlands
Flow Country
Flow Country — Tentative World Heritage site in Highland, Scotland, UK.
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Plan your visit
- Typical visit
- 2 h–4 h
About
Flow Country is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Wikidata describes it as: "Tentative World Heritage site in Highland, Scotland, UK". Coordinates: 58.3715°, -3.6585°.
Photo gallery
From the Wikipedia article
The Flow Country (Scottish Gaelic: Dùthaich nam Boglaichean) is a vast area of bog peatland in Caithness and Sutherland, northern Scotland. It is the largest blanket bog in Europe, and covers about 4,000 km2 (1,500 mi2). It is an area of deep peat, dotted with bog pools, and is a very important habitat for wildlife. As peat is largely made up of the remains of plants, which are themselves made up of carbon, it locks up large stores of carbon for thousands of years. This carbon would otherwise be released to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. In 2024 the Flow Country was awarded World Heritage status by UNESCO on account of its unparalleled blanket bog habitat. It includes the Forsinard Flows National Nature Reserve and the Caithness and Sutherland Peatlands.
Excerpt from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the source article linked in Sources below.
Background
History
"Flow" is a Scots word for a bog or morass, possibly derived from Old Norse (compare the Icelandic word flói, which has the same meaning). The bogs of the Flow Country have been subject to human activity since the end of the last ice age. In the last 200 years, they have been affected by human activity, including sheep grazing and forestry. In the 1970s and 1980s, government tax breaks incentivised commercial forestry operations which drained areas of the bogs and planted non-native conifers, damaging the bogs and causing loss of some of the peatland. In 1987 the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) released a report in London that was highly critical of the foresters. In the Finance Act 1988…
Sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Coordinates
- 58.3715, -3.6585
- Address
- Scotland
Sources
- wikidata: Q1847928 (CC0)
- wikipedia: Flow Country (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- commons: Sutherland Flow Country.jpg (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Frequently asked questions
- Where is Flow Country?
- Flow Country is in Scottish Highlands, in the United Kingdom — coordinates 58.3715°, -3.6585°.