A BID to have parts of Europe's largest peatbog declared a Unesco World Heritage Site is expected to be submitted early next year.
Called the Flow Country, the area stretches across almost half a million acres of Caithness and Sutherland.
The 419,210-acre area of peatbog, lochs, and bog pools is twice the size of Orkney and the Flow Country Partnership hopes to secure Unesco status for seven areas that it believes meet the required criteria.
It secured approval from the UK Government back in 2020 to prepare a bid to Unesco and has started a consultation on the proposed boundaries.
It has now also made a draft management plan available for public scrutiny.
Bogs in the tundra-type landscape have been growing since the end of the last Ice Age more than 10,00 years ago. The area's peat is up to 10m deep and its soil stores about 100 million tonnes of carbon, making it vital in the fight against climate change.
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Several organisations are involved in the project including NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scotland, Scottish Forestry, Highland Council, RSPB Scotland and Plantlife International.
The Environmental Research Institute UHI in Thurso, Highland Third Sector Interface, Flow Country Rivers Trust, Northern Deer Management Group and Highlands and Islands Enterprise are also involved.
Scotland currently has six World Heritage sites in the Forth Bridge, the Antonine Wall, New Lanark, the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh and St Kilda.
If successful in its bid, the Flow Country would be the first peatlands on the World Heritage List and would join other internationally important natural areas, such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The Flow Country Partnership will ask the UK Government to submit its nomination by the bid's January 2023 deadline.
Unesco is expected to make its decision by mid-2024.
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