A motion calling for ‘a step change in conserving wild land and endangered species’ will be debated in the Scottish Parliament at 5pm on Wednesday 6 March.
Motion S4M-6502, Endangered Species and Wild Land Conservation, lodged by Murdo Fraser MSP, has won the support of SNP, Labour, Conservative and independent MSPs.
Stuart Brooks, Chief Executive of the John Muir Trust (JMT) said: “Tomorrow’s debate is a positive step forward for the Trust’s Wild Land Campaign. This is the Scottish Government’s Year of Natural Scotland, so this discussion is timely.
“We welcome the cross-party support this motion has attracted. This debate should be a step up to a nationwide debate on the rapid loss of Scotland’s wild land as a result of unsuitable development.
“We’re running out of time. Two years ago, when we delivered our petition to Parliament calling for a wild land designation, SNH warned of the dangers of leaving it too late to take action. Since then, development pressure on our wild land has grown more intense. With the proportion of wild land left in Scotland shrinking at an alarming rate, this debate should be a wake-up call to politicians across the political spectrum to take action urgently.”
Ramblers Scotland is also supportive of the JMT’s Wild Land Campaign but is concerned that the process for establishing such a designation, including new legislation, will take too long and too small an area of Scotland will be protected for its wild land value.
The Ramblers in Scotland have called for the following three priorities to be addressed:
“Firstly, the western boundary of the Cairngorms National Park should be extended across the Monadhliaths until it is close to Fort Augustus, and all windfarm applications within this area should be rejected, in their entirety. At the same time consideration needs to be given to promoting the Cairngorms National Park as a potential World Heritage Site, for designation under the World Heritage Convention as an outstanding area of worldwide significance for its cultural and natural values. The Cairngorms was proposed for such an accolade as long ago as 1981 but successive UK and Scottish Governments have done little to advance the case in the last 30 years.
Secondly, if a new environmental designation designed to protect wild land is not agreed at present, we should consider whether wild land protection needs can be built into planning policies as a whole, as well as into the financial incentives which underpin much of what happens on the land, especially in support of agriculture and forestry. We need to gain a widespread acceptance and understanding that wild land is present everywhere, with different degrees of “wildness” or “wilderness” quality, from the green spaces in our cities to the tops of the mountains. In this way we have a basis for building criteria into our existing planning and financial mechanisms to protect wild land and its enjoyment.
Thirdly, to address public concerns about the scale of windfarm development in Scotland, the subsidy regime (the Renewables Obligation) should be scrapped for large scale onshore windfarm development. Any energy subsidies should instead be directed towards the support of small scale farmer/crofter/community turbine developments and large offshore windfarm development.”