The Flow Country is home to a rich variety of wildlife, and is used as a breeding ground for many different species of birds, including greenshank, dunlin, merlin and golden plover.

One of the most prevalent plant species of the Flow Country is sphagnum moss, which can store large amounts of water, and eventually form peat – the building block of a blanket bog.

All of these overlie bedrock which originates during four distinct intervals of geological time; the Archaean to Palaeoproterozoic Lewisian gneiss, the Neoproterozoic Moine succession into which Ordovician to Silurian granite is intruded and the largely Devonian age Old Red Sandstone.

[citation needed] In 1988 Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, scrapped the forestry tax reliefs in light of the harm caused to the United Kingdom's wilderness, halting further planting.

[7] More than 20 km2 has been bought back from Fountain Forestry and the young trees felled and allowed to rot in the plough furrow in the hope and expectation that, in 30 to 100 years, the land will revert to peat bog.