A plea went out this week from those campaigning for a third national park in Scotland, to be followed by a fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh.

As we approach the centenary of the death of the Scots born champion of the great outdoors John Muir, the Scottish Campaign for National Parks (SCNP) and The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland (APRS) called on the Scottish Government to honour his memory by creating more national parks in Scotland.

They are highly unlikely to get their wish before Christmas Eve, the actual anniversary, and, in the current age of austerity, they are even more unlikely to win a new park in the foreseeable future.

But John Muir (1838-1914) was indeed undoubtedly one of Scotland's most famous sons, who made an immense contribution to the worldwide national parks movement. In particular his campaigning efforts in the United States in the 19th Century eventually led to the creation of over 400 National Parks, which have been described as ''America's best ever idea''.

Two are in Scotland - the first is Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and the second is the Cairngorms, which is the largest in the UK.

But Ross Anderson, Chairman of SCNP, said: ''As a nation we are currently near the bottom of the world league in terms of our number of National Parks. This is unfinished business in Scotland, so we have published a well-argued strategy for seven more National Parks to join the two existing ones covering the Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and The Trossachs."

John Mayhew, Director of APRS, agreed: "It would be the best possible way to honour the memory of John Muir for the Scottish Government to create more National Parks. This would help to protect and promote more of Scotland's magnificent landscapes and to regenerate some of the more economically fragile parts of rural Scotland.''

In 2013 SCNP and APRS published their joint report Unfinished Business, calling on the Scottish Government to create up to seven more national parks.

The Scottish Government has, however, so far rejected the call for more parks. The campaigners see this as the SNP breaking its 2011 manifesto commitment to "work with communities to explore the creation of new national parks".

They cite the community of Harris voting overwhelmingly in favour of the creation of Scotland's third National Park, saying this was even this was rejected by the Scottish Government.

Actually Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (The Western Isles Council) gave ministers the excuse not to back the Harris park, by councillors from other islands opposing the idea - a decision born out of distrust of anything to do with the conservation movement.

The enthusiasm of the majority of the residents on Harris for national park designation had given hope that there could be a new green dawn for an island which had suffered so badly from the age old Hebridean problem of chronic depopulation.

But hope seems to provide the foundations for so many national parks, and nowhere more than in the Mesopotamian marshlands which have been recognised as Iraq's first national park.

A recent uplifting TV programme featured the extraordinary story of Iraqi-born engineer Azzam Alwash who returned to the country from the US in 2003.

He had known the marshes well in his childhood, accompanying his father who had managed the marshland irrigation system.

A place so beautiful that it was claimed to be the site of the Garden of Eden.

But in the 1990s Saddam Hussein drained the wetlands by building canals to channel the water from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers away from the marshes, diverting it straight into the Gulf of Persia.

This was to punish the indigenous Marsh Arab tribes, who had risen against him in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Within a matter of months, the marshes, which had covered an area three quarters the size of Wales, were reduced to less than 10% of their original size. By the time Azzam Alwash returned the area was a desert where nothing grew.

He established Nature Iraq, an organisation dedicated to the protection and restoration of this unique piece of Iraq's natural heritage.

By breaching the dykes the water returned and so incredibly did the reeds that were the mainstay of the Marsh Arabs economy as feed for water buffalo, a building material for house and even ingredients for a bread. The fish returned as did the birds, and the people started to come back as well.

The project encountered huge problems and not all the marshes have been restored, but the story does say something fundamentally important about man helping nature recover from human intervention. It is something hopeful, which would seem seasonally appropriate.