The diggers couldn't get there. So they fixed the bog by hand.
Ten days, wooden dams, no machinery. Pools are already forming.
DONE BY HAND.
At Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve, staff and volunteers working with Peatland ACTION spent ten days restoring eroding peat gullies by hand, because the ground was too remote and too fragile for machinery. NatureScot reported the finished work on September 17, 2026.
WHAT HAPPENED
Degraded peat gullies bleed water and carbon-rich peat off a hillside. The usual fix involves diggers reshaping the ground, but here the site was impractical for machinery, so the team carried in wooden dams and coir dams made from natural materials and built them by hand over ten days. New pools are already forming behind the dams. The point is to slow the water down, hold the peat in place and let vegetation come back on its own.
WHY THIS IS HOPESLOP
This is the least photogenic kind of good news: a small crew, hand tools and wet ground. Nothing here is finished — the peatland is not restored, it is on a path towards recovery that will take years of revegetation. But someone walked up a mountain with dam material because the machines could not, and the water is already sitting where it should.
ORIGINAL SOURCENatureScotRead the original report
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