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New figures released by Scottish Natural Heritage have added urgency to the John Muir Trust’s call for better protection of Scotland\u2019s wild land.<\/p>\nNew figures released by Scottish Natural Heritage have added urgency to the John Muir Trust’s call for better protection of Scotland\u2019s wild land.<\/p>\n
The ‘area without visual influence of built development’, one of Scottish Natural Heritage’s key indicators of the state of the Scottish environment, fell from 31 per cent in January 2008 to 28 per cent in December 2009. This drop represents an area around 14 times the size of Glasgow.<\/p>\n
Previous SNH figures showed the area without visual influence of built development had declined from 41 per cent to 31 per cent between 2002 and 2008.<\/p>\n
Helen McDade, head of policy for the John Muir Trust said: \u201cThis is a deeply worrying figure, which will clearly continue to decline if more large developments are approved within wild land areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile many factors are involved, the statistics show that wind developments are responsible for most of this dramatic loss, intruding on areas where little human influence has been felt in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cScotland\u2019s wild land is one of the our most valuable assets, supporting tourism, biodiversity and the wider environment. We can\u2019t afford to lose more of it through the industrialisation of our mountains and moorlands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The John Muir Trust\u2019s petition for better protection of wild land will come before the Scottish Parliament\u2019s Public Petitions Committee on Tuesday 22 February. The petition, signed by more than 3,500 people, was submitted to the Parliament in January.<\/p>\n
SNH\u2019s response to this petition identified the clear threat facing wild land, saying, \u201cThere is a history, in the field of environmental protection, of acting decisively only when the resources in question are under extreme threat. Given the distinctiveness and rarity of Scotland\u2019s wild land resource \u2013 in a western European, not purely a UK, context \u2013 we must surely avoid this trap and act before it is too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
Responses from consultees including the RSPB, VisitScotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Government show a broad consensus that wild land should be protected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New figures released by Scottish Natural Heritage have added urgency to the John Muir Trust’s call for better protection of Scotland\u2019s wild land. The ‘area without visual influence of built development’, one of Scottish Natural Heritage’s key indicators of the state of the Scottish environment, fell from 31 per cent in January 2008 to 28 per cent in December 2009. This drop represents an area around 14 times the size of Glasgow. Previous SNH figures showed the area without visual influence of built development had declined from 41 per cent to 31 per cent between 2002 and 2008. Helen McDade,…<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424","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=3424"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22740,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions\/22740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Read more ›<\/div>\n