The country needs to wake up to the fact that our wild places are at serious risk of being lost to the encroachment of wind farms ("Wind farm may cut power production bill by £45bn", The Herald, June 7).

The recent announcement by planners that Highland Council should accept the proposal to extend a wind farm at Loch Luichart near Garve is a worrying development and perhaps the first sign that no part of Scotland is immune from such vandalism.

No-one is denying that wind energy is a vital factor in Scotland's renewable energy policy but there has to be a point at which common sense is applied to just how many wind farms this small country can sustain without tarnishing its remarkable landscape.

A recent walk to the summit of Ben Cleuch illustrated just what an impact these turbines have on a once unspoilt vista. But this is just about palatable because one is in the Central Belt and the impact of man is already all too apparent.

The north-west Highlands are one of the last great wildernesses in western Europe but that tag will soon no longer be applicable if similar wind farms are allowed to spring up in places such as Garve.

What next? Torridon, Fisherfield? Their very remoteness is perhaps the thing that puts them at risk.

If there is no-one around to see them then no-one will mind?

That simply cannot be allowed to be the argument.

We love and visit these places because of their wildness, because of the fact that the hand of man is not so visible among all that natural wonder.

And if we change these places for the sake of a few extra megawatts of electricity, we will lose them, and I feel that we will lose something of ourselves as Scots.

John Nish,

42 Alma Street,

Falkirk.