{"id":10539,"date":"2014-03-17T17:23:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T17:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/?p=10539"},"modified":"2014-03-17T17:23:59","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T17:23:59","slug":"survey-shows-wind-farms-are-damaging-scottish-tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/survey-shows-wind-farms-are-damaging-scottish-tourism\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey shows wind farms are damaging Scottish tourism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wildland\"<\/a>A new survey shows that walkers and climbers are turning their backs on Scotland as electricity companies industrialise wild lands.<\/p>\n

The Scottish Government is being called on to act now to protect wild lands as a survey reveals that wind farms in mountain areas are damaging a key area of tourism. The call from Scotland\u2019s representative body for mountaineering comes ahead of tomorrow\u2019s debate at Holyrood when MSPs will discuss the Draft Third National Planning Framework.<\/p>\n

A survey of nearly 1,000 climbers and hill walkers, carried out by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, revealed that 68% say parts of Scotland are now less appealing because of wind farms. Around two thirds have already been put off by wind farms from visiting or revisiting places in Scotland they had visited before.<\/p>\n

Over four-fifths of respondents said there must be protection for National Parks, National Scenic Areas and Core Areas of wild land. Two-thirds want buffer zones so developers cannot spoil these special areas by placing industrial-scale wind farms around their perimeters. <\/p>\n

67% say wind farms are making Scotland as a whole a less appealing place to visit. The findings come as large electricity generation and other renewables companies lobby the Scottish Government to abandon proposals for stronger planning guidelines which would offer some extra protection for wild lands.<\/p>\n

David Gibson, MCofS Chief Officer, said: \u201cThe survey results are a stark warning to the Scottish Government \u2013 badly sited wind farms are a serious threat to Scotland\u2019s reputation as a tourism destination. The more that are built in our mountains, the more visitors are put off. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the wind farms planned for Scotland\u2019s most remote and beautiful areas have yet been built and the evidence from this, and other surveys, suggests that visitors dislike them more and more as they cease to be a novelty.<\/p>\n

\u201cNatural heritage tourism is worth \u00a31.6 billion (see Notes for Editors) to the Scottish economy and tourism organisations have consistently emphasised the importance of nurturing these kinds of visitors. One of the main ways of doing this is to ensure that Scotland is seen as offering an \u201cauthentic\u201d experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have written to Energy, Enterprise and Tourism minister Fergus Ewing, who holds the brief both for the approval of large scale renewable energy developments and for tourism, asking for a meeting to discuss the urgent need to protect Scotland\u2019s rapidly diminishing wild, open mountain landscapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is deeply disturbing that the renewables lobby is using all its influence to push the Scottish Government into abandoning proposals that would give some protection to one of Scotland\u2019s greatest natural assets. <\/p>\n

\u201cMinisters must take decisive action to defend Scotland\u2019s natural heritage and the livelihoods of all those small businesses and jobs that depend on walkers and climbers to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

The need to protect Scotland\u2019s reputation among hill walkers and climbers was emphasised by the BMC (British Mountaineering Council), sister organisation of MCofS, which represents climbers and hill walkers in England and Wales.<\/p>\n

BMC CEO Dave Turnbull said: \u201cThe survey results are no surprise to the BMC. The \u2018away from it all\u2019 feel of the Scottish mountains is one of their biggest attractions to walkers and climbers from south of the border.\u00a0 People will naturally vote with their feet and start avoiding areas with intrusive wind farm developments.\u201d
\nAndrew Northcott, an English climber, is among those who increasingly find that badly sited wind farms are damaging the qualities which make Scotland\u2019s mountains so special.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI headed up Meall nam Fuaran from Glen Quaich. It was my first walk in the Highlands for almost a year and I really looked forward to it. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere should have been a fabulous view towards snow-covered mountains \u2013 but what a shame! Someone had put a wind farm high up at 600 meters, changing the wild experience and obscuring the view. I counted 14 turbines in total. Why is Scotland\u2019s environment being trashed in pursuit of power?\u201d<\/p>\n

These views were echoed by John Mackenzie, The Earl of Cromarty, who runs a tourism business at Castle Leod, in Strathpeffer, and who is current president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club and a former MCofS president.
\n\u201cThe attraction of Scotland for the climbers and hill walkers who live here, and for the many who visit from the rest of the UK and overseas, is that it offers the chance to escape into wild and beautiful mountains that are both accessible and of world class status despite their relatively small size; real mountains but on a human scale. It is this small scale of landscape that therefore makes industrial turbines so out of scale and thus visually intrusive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mountain landscape is now under severe threat from the growing numbers of these industrial-scale wind farms that are increasingly changing the character of the landscape. It may not be easy to restore the landscape once the turbines have reached the end of their operating life. It is essential that we put a brake on this in order to protect our mountains and the tourism which is so vital to the prosperity of so many people in small and remote communities. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe main cause of objection to this out-of-scale industrialisation is where it is placed and the effect it has on our landscape. The Scottish Government should seriously consider a buffer zone and be stringent where turbines are proposed in designated landscape areas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new survey shows that walkers and climbers are turning their backs on Scotland as electricity companies industrialise wild lands. The Scottish Government is being called on to act now to protect wild lands as a survey reveals that wind farms in mountain areas are damaging a key area of tourism. The call from Scotland\u2019s representative body for mountaineering comes ahead of tomorrow\u2019s debate at Holyrood when MSPs will discuss the Draft Third National Planning Framework. A survey of nearly 1,000 climbers and hill walkers, carried out by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, revealed that 68% say parts of Scotland…<\/span> <\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservation","category-walking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10544,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10539\/revisions\/10544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}