Tweed Forum are delivering peatland restoration projects throughout the Scottish Borders, across both upland blanket bog and lowland raised bog habitats
Blanket Bog Restoration Projects
Early projects included Peel Fell, Winterhope and Dryhope in the Southern Uplands. Dryhope was the first peatland restoration project in Scotland to be certified under the IUCN Peatland Code and funded by a mixture of public and private finance. After successfully delivering this project, Tweed Forum delivered a second Peatland Code project at Carrifran, Talla & Gameshope in partnership with Borders Forest Trust and Forest Carbon.
During Autumn 2021, restoration works started on Grey Mares Tail and the neighbouring Wemyss and March Estate. Grey Mares Tail proved an extremely challenging site in terms of access and ground conditions, however, work on this site is now complete. The restoration measures implemented at this site include gully blocking, peat hag re-profiling and flat bare peat turfing.
Tweed Forum have also been working with Wemyss & March Estate to restore large areas of degraded peatland across their landholding in the Yarrow water catchment. Working across multiple phases since 2017, we have completed restoration works on approximately 550 ha of the estate, including re-profiling peat hags and gullies, blocking drainage ditches and installing peat bunds to manage water flow. Plans are in development for restoration of a further 1,200 ha over the coming years.
The peatland team are currently working on plans for this year’s funding round. Blanket bog restoration projects at Larriston Fell, Roxburghe Estate and Rosebery Estate are all in the pipeline. The work on Roxburghe Estate will involve a mixture of hag re-profiling and gully blocking with peat dams. This is set to be a challenging project site with some deep, narrow gullies for machines to navigate.
Lowland Raised Bog Restoration Projects
We have also been working to restore lowland raised bogs in the Scottish Borders and Midlothian. In 2019, Tweed Forum oversaw the re-wetting of 3 lowland raised bogs on Rosebery Estate. This included a mixture of ditch blocking and hag re-profiling. During the winter of 2020/21 we assisted The Friends of Leadburn Community group with a forest-to-bog restoration project which included stump flipping techniques to smooth forestry drains and furrows across 3 ha. Following the success of this project we also assisted the community group with arranging stump flipping works on a further 12 hectares of previously forested lowland raised bog at the community woodland during Autumn 2024.
During winter 2022, we worked with the landowner at Glenrath Farm on a project to re-wet a previously drained area of lowland raised bog at Mount Lothian Moss. The bog is one of a number of raised bogs in the Peeblesshire area which provide important habitat for the rare Large Heath butterfly. The drying out of the site has allowed regenerating conifers to encroach onto the bog but we hope the re-wetting work will help prevent the growth of non-native trees which will benefit the natural bog vegetation.