Exploring Scotland's Peatlands with Ranger Student Rob

Scotland, it is widely accepted, is a beautiful country. From tip-to-toe it is filled to the brim with not only landscapes of staggering beauty but habitats of international importance. From the mighty cliffs of Shetland, raucous with the cries of seabirds, through the majestic Cairngorms where wildcats prowl, to the dark skies of the forests of Galloway. It is by some strange and somewhat tragic turn, then, that one of Scotland’s most ecologically important habitats is also its least treasured, at least in the public imagination. These are Scotland’s peatlands.

I, along with the rest of UHI’s rangers-in-training, am trudging up a damp, sometimes steep, and squishy path, which sometimes wobbles unnervingly underfoot. Around us, bare mountaintops look down on us, though we are already high in the hills above Loch Arkaig. This is a remote part of Scotland, a fair distance from anything but a winding forestry track. And yet, at the end of the glen lie the hulking figures of four large, tracked excavators. We are being led towards them by Callum Strong, the Environment Advisor for Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) West Region, who, well-prepared in wellies and a bright orange Hi-Viz jacket, is enjoying his walk into this peatland restoration site, known as ‘Lochan Fhùdair’.

As I wonder how on earth those excavators made it up this glen, Callum explains that peatlands like this one nestled in the hills between Loch Garry and Loch Arkaig cover twenty per-cent of Scotland’s landmass. The likelihood is that, as rangers of the future, me and my peers will be working on and managing sites that contain peat bogs.

Ending our walk near one of the excavators, hard hats on for safety, Callum sits us down for a gratefully received break, some snacks, and some context. Peatlands, he explains, formed across Scotland following the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago. The bogs are layer upon layer of dead vegetation, particularly sphagnum mosses, which fail to decompose properly because they are waterlogged and starved of oxygen. Because of the sheer amount of undecomposed organic material preserved in the peat, peatlands represent the one of earth’s greatest natural carbon store. The UK’s peatlands store vastly more carbon than its forests.

This is both a blessing and a curse. Properly functioning peatlands are a considerable climate ally, keeping carbon locked in the ground, and slowly sequestering more. They can also keep water locked up high in the catchment, helping to prevent flooding. But if peatlands degrade, losing water, losing vegetation, and drying out, they begin to decompose again and start releasing carbon back into the atmosphere. For me and my peers, the likelihood is that, as with eighty per-cent of Scotland’s peat bogs, those that we work in the future on are likely to be in a degraded condition. This is a sobering statistic, and a harsh reality for rangers and land managers across Scotland today. Learning how peatlands can and need to be managed into the future is the reason me and my fellow ranger trainees are here today.

Callum introduces us to Mike, who has stepped out of one of the bigger excavators. He leads the team of contractors up on the site here. Whilst I get the sense he’d be more comfortable back in his cab working, Mike answers our endless questions about the work thoughtfully and thoroughly. There are questions about the long hours, about managing disturbance to wildlife, and also about differing restoration methods. I’m not the only one in the group to wonder about the huge 13-tonne excavator that Mike has hopped out of. Is that really the best way of working in a remote site like this, we ask? Mike’s answer is to jump back into his cab and demonstrate.

Where peatland degrades, sections of the bog begin to break up and wash out, creating systems of sheer-sided hags, and large gullies where material washes away. The bare peat in these hag and gully systems is where the majority of peat will dry out and begin to decompose. Some hags, like the one in front of us now, can be huge, standing taller than a person. Reprofiling them raises the water table and reduces the amount of bare peat, preventing decomposition.

Mike lurches his excavator towards the hag, and slowly, the great orange beast clatters forward into the gully. But suddenly, as Mike begins to reprofile the hag around him, it is as if man and machine become one. Skimming a sleek line of turf off the bog in his bucket, he lays if deftly over the broken ground. When part of the turf flops over the wrong way, Mike manipulates it with just the very end of the bucket and rolls it back over, neat as a dime. Finally, the turf is tapped down to secure it, bouncing back joyfully against the weight of the bucket. Within minutes the hag has disappeared. It is quite a miracle of skilled plant operation.

Mike had told us before getting back to his cab that, so long as the weather is good, each machine and operator can restore around four hectares of peatland a week. And now, we believe him. There are many ways to restore peatlands. Some are very low impact, worked by hand and shovel, using sheep wool and wooden dams to lock up water. Callum is full of respect for these methods, but he needs Mike and his machine miracles. FLS is one of Scotland’s largest landowners and manages over 160,000 hectares of peatland. As Callum explains, his organisation is operating at scale and at pace. There is an urgency to restore as much peatland as quickly as possible to stop it degrading further. 

And Callum is aware that the work being done by Mike and his team is just one part of a larger operation. Peatland restoration is an expensive business – this site of around 200 hectares is costing around half a million pounds to restore – and, unusually, this is site is being privately financed. Although most peatland restorationis currently funded by the Scottish Government via its Peatland ACTION programme, attracting private capital to these type of projects, particularly via the carbon credits market will likely be of increasing importance in the future. 

Moreover, work to restore peatlands can be undone. Callum takes us to the edge of the site, and we peer through the wire of a fence. The other side is a mess of churned up and washed-out ground and bare peat, particularly along the fence line. This is where the red deer patrol along the fence looking for gaps in the wire, Callum explains, and is a stark visualisation of how herbivore pressures from deer and sheep have played a major part in the degradation of Scotland’s peatlands. How restored peatlands are protected from these pressures is a key issue, maintaining a cooperative partnership with key stakeholders like the neighbouring privately-owned estates to control herbivore pressures is an important part of Callum’s work here.

On our route back down from the bog, Callum spots a white-tailed eagle soaring high above the hills and we all stop to quietly watch it circle on the thermals. It is a timely reminder that these peatlands are not merely carbon stores, or future carbon credits. They are habitats, places of life. Mike and his machines are not merely moving turf to keep carbon in the ground, but to put new life into damaged ground. In the spring, Greenshank and Lapwing will come and nest in the new pools created as the restoration efforts raise the water table. Merlin will come to swoop over the mosses and pick off dragonflies which will now breed here. Midges will get caught in the jaws of tiny sundews that will now be able to thrive amongst the rejuvenated sphagnum.

When we qualify as rangers, me and my course mates will become stewards of the natural world, there to protect it, and enable people to love and enjoy its beauty and intricacy. To do so present many hurdles, and requires a diversity of skills, from machine operation and dam building through to stakeholder management and financial grant application writing. Places like Lochan Fhùdairwill rely on people like us to have these skills and to deploy them as deftly as Mike and with as much passion as Callum. But having seen it done, we know it is.

- By Robert Boughten, 2024 Countryside Skills with Ranger Training course graduate