In the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland, one of Scotland's largest and most damaged stretches of blanket bog is getting a new chance. A four-phase restoration project at Rumsdale in the Highland region is now in the procurement stage, with contractors being sought to begin work on what is expected to be a landscape-scale repair covering potentially hundreds or thousands of hectares of degraded peat.
The Flow Country is the largest expanse of blanket bog in Europe and, since July 2024, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first peatland ever to receive that designation. Much of it was damaged in the 1970s and 1980s when tax incentives encouraged investors to plant commercial conifers like Sitka spruce on deep peat, drying out the bog and releasing the carbon it had spent thousands of years accumulating. Undoing that damage means blocking drains, re-wetting the peat surface, reprofiling eroded hags and removing trees, work that requires specialist contractors operating low-ground-pressure machinery during narrow seasonal windows.
Peatlands cover roughly 20% of Scotland's land area and store an estimated 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon, more than all the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. But around 80% of Scottish peatlands are degraded. Rather than storing carbon, they are releasing it, and peatland emissions account for roughly 10% of Scotland's total greenhouse gas output.
Source: NationGraph.
Scotland committed in 2020 to spending £250 million over a decade to restore 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. Progress has consistently fallen short, running at roughly a third of the pace needed. Audit Scotland and the UK Climate Change Committee have both criticised the rate of restoration as too slow, and pressure has grown for larger, more ambitious projects to close the gap.
The Rumsdale project, listed on Public Contracts Scotland, is structured across four phases, a sign of ambition unusual even for Scotland's expanding restoration programme. The contracting authority and total budget have not been disclosed, though projects of this scale typically draw on the Scottish Government's Peatland ACTION programme, administered through NatureScot.
For local communities in Caithness and Sutherland, the project also carries economic weight. Peatland restoration has become a meaningful source of rural employment in a region where crofting and fishing have long been in decline. Highland Council and community groups have pushed to ensure that restoration contracts go to local contractors rather than businesses based elsewhere in Scotland.
No timeline for construction or total hectares has been confirmed. How the project phases will be sequenced, and whether the full scope will proceed contingent on early results, remains to be seen as the procurement process moves forward.
