Work to restore former forestry plantation ground to peatland has received a £3million boost.
The financial assistance for Forestry and Land Scotland comes from the Peatland Action Fund and Scottish Government.
It is handed out by Scottish Natural Heritage and is drawn from the Scottish Government’s £14million investment in projects to restore degraded peatlands.
This year’s work will see 14 sites across Scotland restored, and a range of operations carried out, including surveys and the construction of roads and bridges to enable larger programmes of restoration work in future.
Ian McKee, open habitat ecologist with FLS, said: “This funding is a great testament to the quality and range of restoration projects that we have undertaken over the past five years as we work towards restoring over 2,500 hectares of former forestry plantation back to Blanket Bog and Lowland Raised Bog.
“This hugely important work we are doing is helping secure our carbon stores, and change the peatlands from sources of carbon to carbon sinks.
“Every site we restore adds value to the scale of the contribution we make to our environment, to biodiversity, water quality, and to the people of Scotland.”
FLS’s restoration work involves removing trees and “re-wetting” sites, in addition to smoothing out the ridge and furrow patterning established when sites were originally planted with trees.