At a remote site near Glenelg in the Scottish Highlands, a pair of golden eagles had other plans for Forestry and Land Scotland's peatland restoration team. During a pre-operational survey in spring 2025, staff spotted the protected birds circling an old eyrie near where restoration work was supposed to begin, forcing the agency to pause operations entirely and monitor the nest for months until the eagles moved on. It was just one of the unexpected challenges that made this restoration season remarkable — not for its obstacles, but for what Scotland's national land managers accomplished despite them.
Forestry and Land Scotland has set a new record in its peatland restoration efforts, recovering 1,821 hectares across the country in 2025-26, surpassing the previous year's 1,744 hectares. The work spans Scotland's landscape: from the Flow Country in the far north to Lochar Mosses in the south, from the Kilpatrick Hills in the west to South Rannoch in the east. The scale reflects a deepening commitment to one of Scotland's most vital ecosystems. Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests combined, making their restoration essential to climate action and biodiversity recovery.
The Ardintoul project near Glenelg exemplifies the real-world complexity of this work. After confirming the golden eagle pair had abandoned the nest, FLS established a one-kilometre exclusion zone to protect them should they return during the next breeding season. But the zone encompassed a live power line running through the forest. To proceed safely, the line had to be shut down — a logistics challenge compounded when autumn storms and Christmas snow delayed the shutdown, pushing FLS closer to the breeding season deadline. The team responded by bringing in extra machinery and operators to intensify harvest, mulching, tree clearance, and crucially, the rewetting operations that transform degraded afforested land back into functioning bog. With constant monitoring from an FLS environment ranger, the power lines were finally shut down with just a week to spare before the eagles might return.
"The wellbeing of habitats and protected species is at the forefront of planning and activity," said Isabelle Destor, FLS Peatland Restoration Forester for the Glenelg area. That integration of environmental protection with restoration work reflects a philosophical shift: these aren't extractive projects rushed through to meet targets, but carefully choreographed efforts where ecology dictates pace.
The 1,821 hectares restored in 2025-26 involved converting over 30 formerly commercial, afforested sites — areas where trees had been planted decades ago but no longer belonged — back to open bog and peatland. This conversion work, alongside open hill restoration, required specialist techniques and machinery that didn't exist a generation ago. Rewetting degraded peat involves careful hydrological engineering: blocking drainage channels, removing trees, reprofiling peat hags to restore water flow. It's labour-intensive and demands collaboration between planners, environment teams, harvesting specialists, and civil engineers.
Destor credits this record not to any single hero effort, but to what she calls "collaborative working" — the seamless coordination between FLS staff and contractors, effective communication across teams with different expertise, and the willingness to adapt when storms or eagles demand it. That philosophy suggests peatland restoration in Scotland isn't slowing down. As climate science underscores the urgency of protecting these carbon-rich ecosystems, and as land management agencies prove they can scale up restoration while respecting wildlife, Scotland's peatlands are being given time to recover — one carefully managed hectare at a time.