The Flow Country became the first peat bog in the world to be granted world heritage site status by Unesco in July.The Flow Country became the first peat bog in the world to be granted world heritage site status by Unesco in July.A British arms company has abandoned plans to detonate fragmentation bombs in the middle of the Flow Country world heritage site, the Guardian can reveal.
Overwatch’s chief operating officer, Mark Melhorn, said the firm had no idea that the area it planned to use was in the Flow Country world heritage site or included part of the Strathmore peatlands. A spokesperson for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: “The withdrawn application to the CAA is certainly unusual and we would have had concerns with it regarding the potential impacts on designated sites at the location.”
Melhorn confirmed that Overwatch had been planning to test a fragmentation bomb, which the company’s marketing publicity says has “exceptional kinetic effect for size and mass”; it weighs as little as 1.5kg. The firm summarised its plans as “live fire testing of a one-way system UAV equipped with an anti-personnel warhead targeting a designated area at the Glengolly location within the Ulbster estate”.