The John Muir Trust today welcomed the decision by Scotland’s Energy Minister Fergus Ewing to reject an application for a major wind farm adjacent to the East Halladale Flows Wild Land Area in Caithness. The development would have led to the erection of 24 turbines up to 456 feet high, as well as foundations roads, tracks, transmission lines and other infrastructure in an area renowned for its unique landscape and ecosystem. But following a Public Local Inquiry, the scheme has been rejected because of its potential impact on the Wild Land Areas map, which was developed by Scottish Natural Heritage…

An adult humpback whale, possibly greater than 12 metres in length, has been sighted in the Firth of Clyde this week – the fifth such whale to be seen off western Scotland in the past month, compared with a usual total of just one or two per year. The whale was sighted off Tighnabruaich in the Kyles of Bute on 6 July. On 8 July it surfaced alongside the Scottish Ocean Youth Trust’s yacht, spouting and swimmingly strongly in a northward direction into Loch Fyne. The whale was observed breaching out of the water and lob-tailing – a dramatic manoeuvre…

The decision to turn down plans for a wind farm on the edge of the world-renowned Glen Affric area, west of the Great Glen, has been welcomed as “positive news” by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland and the John Muir Trust. The proposal, by German developers, wpd, would have led to the construction of six turbines, each 400 foot high, on the edge of one of Scotland’s most famous landscapes. The project was opposed by wild land charity the John Muir Trust, the Mountaineering Council of Scotland which represents Scotland’s hillwalkers and mountaineers, two local community councils and over 1,000…

The Mountaineering Council of Scotland (MCofS) has expressed its disappointment and concern at the negligible response it received to a request for political party leaders to set out their positions on protecting Scotland’s wild land in advance of the general election. This contrasts strikingly with the enthusiastic response to its public petition on the same subject which has already exceeded 10,000 signatures. Campaigning to highlight the importance of Scotland’s mountains and remaining wild land for tourism, recreation and economic sustainability, the MCofS wrote to the leaders of all political parties at Holyrood and Westminster on 20 March 2015. The organisation…

A graphic novel based upon the life of pioneering conservationist John Muir, free copies of which were sent to every secondary school in Scotland last year, has created a statistically significant shift in pupil’s attitudes towards and connection to the natural world, according to a recent study. Muir, a Scottish born inventor, naturalist and writer, spent his life exploring wild places and was the founding father of national parks in America. The novel, entitled John Muir, Earth – Planet, Universe, combined environmental studies with literacy in an innovative way that hasn’t previously been implemented in Scotland, and was intended to…