Outdoors: The RSPB Forsinard Flows reserve in Sutherland

IT ISthe closest to wilderness we have left in the UK, a vast expansive bog that stretches for as far as the eye can see, peppered with dark peaty lochans and home to rare birds.

The Flow Country of Sutherland and Caithness is a striking, alluring landscape, much of which has been untouched by the hand of man for thousands of years. It is an eclectic mix of water and land, of ever-changing colour, from burnished copper in summer evening sun to the stark greys and browns of a wind-lashed rainstorm.

Walk across the Flows and your boots squelch on this quivering mass with its backdrop of distant hazy mountains. It is a place of vast horizons with the capability of stirring deep emotions, including those of ornithologist Desmond Nethersole-Thompson who remarked upon the “acute loneliness and infinite smallness” he felt during a visit to Sutherland in 1932 in search of the rare greenshank.

It is thought the word “Flow” derives from an old Norse word meaning “marshy ground”, which certainly provides a succinct reflection of this huge area of blanket bog characterised by deep layers of peat built up since the last Ice Age and liberally studded with pools and lochs. On a global scale, blanket bog is an incredibly rare habitat – scarcer even than many types of rainforest – with the Flows alone representing about four per cent of world coverage.

Inevitably, the uniqueness of the landscape makes it home to a diverse range of unusual flora and fauna, the nutrient-poor peat supporting specially adapted plant species including sphagnum mosses, cotton grass, deer grass, bog asphodel and insect-eating bladderworts and butterworts. The vast openness also attracts breeding birds one would more normally associate with the Arctic tundra such as golden plover, dunlin, greenshank, and black and red-throated divers. Even extremely rare UK breeding birds such as the wood sandpiper and scoter duck breed here.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that for the last 16 years the area has captivated Norrie Russell, the site manager for the RSPB’s Forsinard Flows reserve which is set in the heart of this marvellous landscape. “It is a fantastic place and there are not many places left in the UK that embody such wildness,” he says.

However, this wilderness should not be taken for granted and there have been major threats in the recent past, with significant areas of the Flows decimated in the 1980s after being sold off to private forestry aided by investors taking advantage of the tax relief schemes provided at the time. By 1987 some 80,000 acres of this fragile land had been lost to blanket forestry and the ecological damage was immense, with more than 120 pairs of rare greenshank alone having had their precious breeding habitat destroyed.

But sustained lobbying from environmental bodies brought a u-turn in thinking and the area is now thankfully subject to more sustainable and appropriate management. But large remnants of the 1980s forestry still exist and a crucial part of the RSPB management strategy at Forsinard since 1995 is to block the drains that were put in place then and harvest and remove remaining tracts of forestry from the deep peat soils. Recently, the organisation bought two areas of plantation situated in the middle of the reserve so as to continue this land rehabilitation.

Where the blanket bog is restored there have been significant improvements in the breeding bird population, particularly for waders such as dunlin and golden plover. Hen harriers and short-eared owls, too, have benefited enormously, with more harriers now reared annually here compared with the whole of the threatened English population.

Russell says: “Having such a large, wild and ancient landscape on the densely populated island where we live is often a revelation for people. Very few realise that its fragile deep peats contain many times more carbon than all the woods and forests in the UK. If we care for it, it will care for us.”