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Publicly funded environmental vandalism ripe across the Scottish Uplands

C4PMC


So much of what is taking place in the Scottish Uplands is no more than publicly funded environmental vandalism.

 

Using the excuse of 'fighting climate change', irreplaceable and globally rare landscapes are being trashed by ploughing, draining and planting with trees.

 

The rare wildlife that these unique heather dominated peatlands supports is sacrificed, often so large carbon emitting firms can carry on as usual whilst pretending to investors and customers that they possess impeccable green credentials.

 

A child can see that planting commercial forests on peatland is an environmental crime. No one in their right mind would substitute peat rich carbon accumulated over thousands of years, for a timber cash crop that will destroy the peat that already exists and completely eradicate the plants and conditions that enable the peat to be formed.

 


This is not a theoretical position. It is visible and demonstrable wherever it has happened. Go to Galloway, go to the Borders, go to Kinrara. Walk among the trees, look at the devastation, marvel at the lost wildlife, search in vain for curlew, stare in horror at the torn ground, scarred yellow where the iron pan, stable for millennia, that the peat depends on, has been ripped up by plough and digger.

 

Then remember that this has been paid for by taxpayers.

 

Money that could have gone to schools and hospitals has been given to the rich to encourage the rape of a landscape. All to tick a box on a civil servant's form, so that they can tell a minister that their wish has become reality.

 

For a long time we have been almost alone in pointing out that this is madness. The big beasts of the conservation industry have been silent or even complicit.

 

There are vast sums of money available for 'fighting climate change' and they wanted their share. Furthermore, as it was government policy, they would do nothing to annoy the people who might further their interests. After all what is the destruction of a landscape when compared with strategic advantage?

 

But there has been a slight change. A straw in the wind. That wind has come from an unlikely quarter. It has come from the keyboard of Ruth Tingay.

 

Ruth is known for taking part in a Game and Wildlife Conservation process, with a complete lack of irony, under the pseudonym- 'Brussels Sprout', but it is as the controlling mind of the 'Raptor Persecution' website that she will be known to most.

 

This week we read a remarkable piece from her. Something that anyone who cares about our unique moorlands and the wildlife they support can wholeheartedly agree with. Ruth has launched a blistering attack on the 'Rape of Strobo Hope'.

 

She is clearly very angry about what is going on and, for once, we agree with her. What is taking place is a complete disgrace. It will have catastrophic impacts on the ecology and wildlife. It will have no appreciable impact on climate change, indeed in the long term it will make things worse. It will however make some people a lot of money and tick a couple of empty boxes on a form in an office somewhere far away.

 

An ex-grouse moor at Strobo Hope is to be turned into a commercial forest. Obviously, it is an ex-grouse moor, if it was still a functioning moor, Ruth would almost certainly have felt unable to defend it. The total area is 10 sq km of mostly heather dominated moorland, of which 7 sq km will be commercial Sitka plantation.

 

Credit: Forest Machine Magazine


The organisations involved are True North Asset Partnership, who own the place, Pryor and Rickett Silvaculture who are doing the work and Scottish Forestry who is overseeing everything for the government.

 

The whole scheme is driven by the £2,000,000 of taxpayer money that will be given to True North as a reward for destroying an ancient and irreplaceable landscape.

 

Shockingly, according to Ruth, none of these organisations felt that they needed to go to all the trouble and expense of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), despite NatureScot saying that they thought one was necessary.

 

This was because Scottish Forestry thought that turning an open peatland landscape hunted by golden eagles and home to forestry averse birds such as curlew and black grouse, was 'not likely to cause a significant negative environmental impacts'.

 

In a way that is understandable. Ruth's friends in the RSPB have persistently said that grouse moors, which this has all the appearance of being, are burnt, barren, industrial landscapes. In such circumstances why would the people responsible for destroying it think there was any need to do an EIA on land that the most important wildlife organisation in the country says is, by definition, barren and industrial?

 

To be fair Ruth has said similar things, but now her view has changed, and we are glad that it has. This is more important than being for or against grouse shooting. It is about the retention of a beautiful natural landscape that is one of the rarest in the world and the special animals and plants that depend on it to survive.

 

Just to be clear on the likelihood or otherwise of 'significant negative environmental impacts', let us consider what Scottish Forestry thinks is insignificant.

 

Turning an open landscape into a commercial forestry plantation consisting of fast growing and invasive exotic conifers? Insignificant.

 

Building massive roads through previously pristine moorland? Insignificant.

 

Spraying thousands of hectares of natural vegetation with broad spectrum herbicide in order to kill all existing plants and mosses?  Insignificant.

 

Ploughing thousands of hectares of soil that has never been ploughed, thus exposing carbon to rapid oxidation and loss, and destroying a soil structure that has been stable for millennia? Insignificant.

 

Draining land that has never previously been drained, increasing run off and flooding risk and increasing the risk of carbon leaching away in run off?  Insignificant.

 

Making the vast majority of landscape almost entirely unusable by open country bird species, including curlew, lapwing, snipe, redshank, golden plover, red grouse, black grouse, skylark, meadow pipit, ring ouzel, merlin, hen harrier, golden eagle and more? Insignificant.

 

If all these massive impacts are to be considered as 'not likely to cause significant negative  environmental impacts', as Scottish Forestry and True North Asset Partnership claim, it is fair to ask what would have to happen before they thought that there was likely to be a negative impact?

 

The soil is wrecked, the birds are wrecked, the waters wrecked, the existing carbon stores are wrecked, the vegetation is wrecked. That's just about everything. What else is there?

 

So for once we are in agreement with Ruth. This is an utter disgrace. Worse, it is a disgrace that is being repeated over and over again in the Scottish Uplands.

 

The people responsible should hang their heads in shame. But they won't. Far from it. They will likely trouser the taxpayer cash. They will get promoted for meeting targets. They will be given cover by the conservation industry who lack the courage that Ruth has shown, in large part because they are, one way or another, complicit in this appalling farce.

 

Well done Ruth. We never thought we would see you fighting for something that has all the physical characteristics of a grouse moor and which was managed as one until recently. Now let’s see you do the same for some of the other places that are just as precious and just as under attack.

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