IN your article highlighting The John Muir Trust’s (JMT) Keep It Wild campaign (“Fresh push to protect wild areas from industrial places”, The Herald, June 13) reference is made to “designated wild land” areas. These areas carry no legal designation. There is good reason for this: wild land is a subjective concept and legal designation requires objective and consistently measurable criteria.
Wild land mapping was something seized on by individuals and organisations with a largely anti-wind farm agenda following an academic exercise by Leeds University. It relies on subjective tests, such as perceived ruggedness and how people feel in a landscape. Even the more objective criteria such as the absence of evidence of human development are vague, since signs of older human existence is allowed. These “tests” are individual and rely on personal knowledge of how a landscape comes about.
We need some honesty. There is almost nowhere in Scotland which has been shaped only by nature and might therefore be considered wild or wilderness. Scotland has some beautiful, valued landscapes but shaping by human development is an integral part of what they are. If we are to have a living, working countryside, humans will need to be allowed to continue to shape it.
Of course, there are some places that need sensitive treatment and there are some aspects of our past that we should be careful not to obliterate from our landscapes, we would not for a second seek to deny this, but let’s not pretend we are preserving wildness.
David Johnstone
Chairman, Scottish Land & Estates,
Stuart House, Eskmills Business Park, Musselburgh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel