Conserving Scotland's raised bogs

Summary

Raised bog was always a relatively rare habitat in Scotland and, being mainly found in lowland areas, the habitat has had a long history of land-use and exploitation associated with it. Today, raised bogs are considered as one of Britain's rarest and most endangered habitats. As a consequence the Scottish Wildlife Trust ran a conservation programme (the Scottish Raised Bog Conservation Project) between 1993 and 1995 to set up a strategy which could conserve the remaining bogs. A major landcover survey executed under the auspices of the project revealed widespread damage although 9% of the resource remained in a ‘near-natural’ state. However, the continuing cumulative effects of centuries of small scale activities and the effects of past and present air-pollution places all sites under considerable threat. One way to counter such threats is to enact positive conservation management on sites. To date, most work has concerned vegetation and hydrological management on the mire surface. Initial analyses of monitoring programmes suggest this type of conservation management is having little impact across the whole site. It is suggested that more comprehensive programmes of management should now be undertaken to restore the hydrological system of the whole site including the surrounding lagg fens.