YOUR farming correspondent, Rog Wood, summed up the opportunity: "Scotland's beautiful, natural environment is a basis for big business" ("Scottish farmers need to exploit agri-tourism's economic potential", The Herald, March 2).
So it was appropriate that your editorial expressed concern at the erosion of the quality of our wild land by built development and gave support to efforts to secure greater protection ("Wind of change required to restore the public's faith", The Herald, March 2). But this will not be achieved simply through a reform of the planning system, as advocated by the National Trust for Scotland, Ramblers Scotland and many other outdoor organisations in their letter (March 2). Most of our wild land is primarily affected not by planning decisions but by activities associated with agriculture, forestry, deer and grouse moor management.
New legislation is undoubtedly part of the process of protecting our wild land in the future from inappropriate wind farms, hill roads, tree planting, ploughing, fencing and so on. But we will not see such legislation this side of the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016. Meanwhile the rate of attrition of wild land is so rapid, well documented by Scottish Natural Heritage, that some action must be taken now at governmental level.
Perhaps we need a Wild Land Forum to bring the main interests, both public and private, together to promote wild land protection and to examine the various options. Something similar to the National Access Forum is needed - established in the early 1990s and still going strong today, this was the SNH led grouping that laid the foundation for Scotland's world class access legislation, securing rights of public access to most of our land and water. Having protected our rights of access in 2003 surely we must now ensure that the natural and cultural values associated with that land and water are equally well protected.
A European Parliament resolution in 2009 identified the need to do more to protect wild land and subsequently the Scottish Government responded to this challenge by promoting wild land mapping, including the identification of "core" wild land areas by SNH, and incorporating the results into planning policy. We need to build on this good start by raising awareness of wild land values from garden gate to mountain summit and incorporating wild land protection into Scotland's land use strategy. With nature based tourism worth at least £1.4 billion per annum this makes economic as well as environmental sense.
Dave Morris,
2 Bishop Terrace, Kinnesswood, Kinross.
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