This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.
The Scottish Government is looking like a flamingo with its ostrichy head in the sand when it comes to issues that involve National Parks – whether they’re on the banks of Loch Lomond, or potentially in the rolling hills of Galloway.
Those blushing feathers of panic tell us that the SNP don’t really know what to do over nature, or indeed the increasingly thorny issue of National Parks.
Last week, following the news that the Scottish Government’s Reporter had announced intention to approve the planning application for Flamingo Land’s Lomond Banks development, the SNP knocked back demands that Scottish Ministers call the decision in.
Public finance minister Ivan McKee said: “Given the very technical planning issues raised in this case and the high level of public interest, I consider it appropriate that objective planning judgement is applied in this case, and for that reason I do not intend to recall this appeal.”
But the pressure to call the decision in on a development that was only last year rejected by Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park Authority after eight years of controversy is still growing. And behind that call are over 40,000 signatures on a petition by the Scottish Greens which says, "Tell Scottish Ministers to Save Loch Lomond".
Then, in other news, this week, reports emerged that Mairi Gougeon is set to make an announcement on Thursday regarding the Galloway National Park proposal for a third National Park following a recent consultation.
A Scottish Greens press release said: “On Thursday, the SNP's Rural Affairs minister is expected to scrap plans to establish a National Park in Galloway, a core commitment of the Bute House Agreement. Land-owning lobbyists have demanded investment in the area without any protections of the local environment.”
A movement against the Galloway National Park proposal has grown rapidly and vocally since last summer – much to the surprise of those who originally drove the bid and believed it to be widely supported – and by now it feels like the loudest voice. I’ve spoken to people on both sides, and both speak passionately, though often it seems the pro-parkers are quieter.
I’m reluctant, as some have done, to caricature the No campaign as driven chiefly by lobbyists or those with business interests. People like Denise Brownlee and Liz Hitschmann, grandmothers, neighbours and founders of the No Galloway National Park, are genuine and heartfelt. But there are also the National Farmers Union of Scotland, landowners and foresters, a high-profile PR firm and some vocal MSPs which make it seem more like an interests campaign.
Those that argue against the National Park, often come from different angles, sometimes contradictory – fearful of ‘overtourism’, fighting off bureaucracy, defending the renewables industry - as happens with any anti campaign. It includes farmers fearful of red tape, renewables industry, foresters of conifer plantations.
Meanwhile some support a ‘park-lite’ plan. Versions of this – a possible smaller plan including the geographical areas most in favour of the park and most standing to benefit - were suggested to me by locals when I visited the area this year.
But my fear is that for some park-lite may mean ditching nature, and those elements that give it extra protections. It may mean saying that a National Park isn’t about biodiversity - though it is about, according to its principles - conserving natural and cultural heritage.
That concerns me because, like many, I take seriously the biodiversity crisis - especially given what Professor Johan Rockstrom, the scientist behind the planetary boundary frameworks told me of how his biggest concern is what is happening with nature.
Scottish Green MSP Mark Ruskell has stood up for the Galloway National Park proposal, saying : “I hope the SNP ignore a small number of voices who want to stop any kind of change, anywhere. A Galloway National Park would have a positive impact for nature and communities and would be managed and controlled by local people themselves.
“Scottish communities were competing against each other last year to secure a new National Park, it would be an embarrassment if SNP Ministers now blocked every community in Scotland from hosting a new park.”
But this wasn't always just about the Scottish Greens. Both the SNP and the Conservatives advocated for another park, and the Tories even, in their manifesto, called specifically for a park in Dumfries and Galloway.
Part of the problem, I suspect, resides in the confusion around what National Parks are really for, in spite of there being an act which defined them as, in part, about conserving "natural and cultural heritage" - and which of different principles should carry more weight. Does, for instance, a Lomond Banks resort containing monorail, water park, hotel and restaurants, represent conserving the natural heritage?
Certainly, the board of the LLTNPA appeared to think it wasn't an adequate response to a nature crisis, which is one of the reasons the application was rejected last September.
Campaigner Nick Kempe, in a detailed piece of analysis in his Parkswatch Scotland blog, has pointed out that the Reporter's recent announcement is no big surprise, since the arguments pitched against by LLTNPA were not that strong.
“Under pressure from the public and from their Board," Kempe wrote, "some of whom want to be seen to be doing something to tackle the nature crisis, LLTNPA senior management had little choice but to recommend rejection of Flamingo Land’s application last September. The grounds they provided for doing so, however, were very weak.” This he notes, paved the way for the Reporter overturning the rejection.
On Lomond Banks nothing is yet set in stone. There is still the possibility of Ministers calling it in, and even of a judicial review. There is also, crucially, time. The Reporter, after all, has given Flamingo Land and the LLTNPA six months to come up with a legally binding “planning obligation that secures the employment issues and environment issues that are set out in the Lomond Promise”.
The fight is certainly not over. This Friday will see an emergency meeting of Balloch and Haldane Community Council “to discuss the next steps in fighting this ludicrous development”.
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At the same time, the Galloway National Park raises its own questions about what a National Park means for nature, given is potential siting in an area of high agriculture productivity, dairy farming and wind farm density.
It could, of course, mean striving harder to make that work alongside nature protection – but we may never know how that looks if the plan is dropped.
What’s often confusing in the middle of all this, whether Galloway or Loch Lomond, is working out who really is advocating for nature? And on what grounds? Who is doing the deep thinking about what works for both biodiversity and community?
No Galloway National Park campaigner Denise Brownlee, for instance, describes herself as a “tree-hugging, lentil-munching veggie" and says she doesn’t want all those tourists partly because of some of the damage they do to nature.
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But Rob Lucas, chairman of the Galloway National Park Association is also a long-term nature lover, and has spoken about how “National Parks can support communities and nature for the long-run”.
“This is the forgotten corner of Scotland,” he has said. “We need a national park to put Galloway on the map to attract people to live, work and visit, and help prevent it becoming the dumping ground for inappropriate windfarms and insensitive afforestation.”
There are no easy answers and no doubt the SNP Government would like all this to disappear. But with Reform UK already picking up votes in Dumfries & Galloway in last year’s general election, and the incumbent Conservatives strong in the area, it’s unlikely the words 'National Park' will vanish from the debate, even if the plan is shelved till after the election.
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