Does Scotland really need another SEVEN national parks?
They were designed to protect the country’s most beautiful natural areas – not least from antisocial daytrippers and wild camping louts. But tensions with homeowners, farmers and landowners show the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions...
FROM her vantage point at Luss Primary School, Lorna Slater was busy declaiming the spectacular vistas across tranquil Loch Lomond and its ancient countryside as one of ‘the jewels in Scotland’s crown’.
The newly anointed minister for biodiversity had arrived at the picturesque Dunbartonshire village on the bonnie banks to confirm plans for a public consultation leading to the creation of a third national park.
‘We need your help and ideas,’ she said. ‘We want to gauge what people want their national parks to deliver for the environment, culture and the communities within their boundaries. I would strongly encourage everyone to take part and ensure your views are heard and reflected in the shaping of this historic expansion of Scotland’s national parks.’
The minister’s entreaties may, however, raise a few eyebrows among the villagers of Luss. Most famous as the stand-in for the fictional hamlet of Glendarroch in STV’s long-running soap Take The High Road, their community has not always enjoyed a harmonious relationship with the national park bosses who have controlled its destiny since Scotland’s first park was formed 20 years ago.
Indeed, less than a decade after the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park was formally opened by the Princess Royal in 2002, an acrimonious war was played out between its 102 inhabitants and the managers of the 720 square-mile wilderness that surrounds it.
There were dark mutterings of insensitivity, high-handedness and general interference in the running of several local businesses.
In one case, questions were raised in Holyrood after a building once run as a non-profit visitor centre and 100-seat restaurant was taken out of community control and leased privately. In another, there were moves to evict the proprietor of a popular ice cream kiosk on Luss pier.
There again, Miss Slater might have struggled to pick a spot within the park which has not been beset by political storms. At the southern end of the loch, the park authority has been wrestling for years with plans for a £40million leisure facility on a beautiful, wooded stretch of shore near Balloch.
It probably didn’t help that the preferred bidder for the Lomond Banks project – which includes a 60-bedroom ‘aparthotel’, lodges, a watersports hub and food outlets – went by the name of Flamingo Land, a developer bestknown for a theme park and zoo in Yorkshire.
Locals were aghast. Ross Greer, Miss Slater’s fellow Green MSP, rustled up a 50,000 signature petition against the development, while one resident summed up the disquiet, saying: ‘This beautiful place was formed over hundreds of millions of years and has been bequeathed to the nation and not to boost the portfolio of billionaire developers.’
Elsewhere, as the park grew older, the behaviour of a minority of its 4.5million annual visitors became more infantile. Those same scenic treasures which so excited Miss Slater had roused the interest of loutish urbanites, who started to commandeer it as their summer playground.
Arriving in cars laden with beer, barbecues and sound systems, with no clue about the codes of the countryside, they would depart leaving the picture-postcard panoramas polluted with their food cartons, crisp bags, dirty nappies and tent poles.
Such antisocial conduct forced the authorities to invoke bylaws outlawing wild camping in certain areas of the park – to the relief of residents and farmers, and to howls of protest from the right-to-roam lobby.
Recently there were calls for a jet ski ban from Loch Lomond over claims they are a danger to the public. Dumbarton Labour MSP Jackie Baillie said: ‘I have to say, given the problems with enforcement, I am increasingly of the view that they shouldn’t be allowed at all.’
Loch Lomond Boats and Jet Skis, which has more than 6,300 members, said they wanted to work with the authorities to tackle any problems.
Attempts to control the wildlife inhabiting Scotland’s other – and the UK’s largest – national park, are also causing flashpoints.
Cairngorm National Park (CNP), which opened in 2003, contains 55 Munros – including five of the UK’s six highest peaks – and a sizeable number of the country’s troublesome red deer population.
Plans for a cull of ‘up to half the red deer population’ in the Cairngorms have sparked a furious backlash among sporting estates which last month mounted a ‘day of protest’, claiming the park authority’s commitment to a programme of rewilding and ‘wider biodiversity’ was putting at risk up to 400 jobs.
Twenty years on from their inception, such disputes feel like more than simply teething issues. With annual running costs for the two parks draining £14million from the public purse, small wonder the Scottish Government has been dragging its heels over adding to its burden.
All that changed when it needed the Greens’ backing to form a majority administration and the coalition’s programme for government, the socalled Bute House Agreement, made a pledge to create ‘at least one’ more national park by 2026. With COP26 fast receding in the rear-view window, the need for a grand gesture must have seemed irresistible.
A public consultation overseen by NatureScot was launched, but campaigners insist the case for up to seven more parks is inarguable.
England, which has ten such parks, has started designating new areas, while Scotland, which accounts for one third of the area of the UK and is the birthplace of John Muir, the international movement’s founder, is lagging behind.
‘Huge swathes of Scotland are special, but some are more special than others and worthy of protection for the future,’ said John Mayhew, director of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland.
‘The two things national park status brings are a focus on that area and extra resources, meaning money and staff 100 per cent paid for by the Scottish Government.’
Galloway with its rich tapestry of farmland, hill country, lochs, forests and rocky coast running from South Ayrshire in the north to the Solway Firth emerged as an early frontrunner. Its proposal – backed by most conservation, outdoor and wildlife groups, local authorities and all opposition parties – estimates that a new park will help to create 1,000 jobs while bringing in £60million a year from increased tourism.
With such a prize up for grabs, it has rivals. Six other areas have been mooted: Borders & Cheviots, Glen Affric, Harris, Wester Ross, a coastal and marine park focused on Mull, and the area around Ben Nevis, Glencoe and Black Mount.
The most advanced of the six is Borders where a lottery-funded feasibility study in 2017 concluded that the area, which would link with the Northumberland National Park in northern England, met the criteria for national park status.
A ‘national park’ is an area set aside by a government for the preservation of the natural environment. It may be designated for purposes of public recreation and enjoyment or because of its historical or scientific interest and it usually entails strict rules to conserve the landscapes and flora and fauna in their natural state.
Dunbar-born naturalist Muir has been described as the ‘father of the national parks’ for his work to protect areas such as the Yosemite Valley in the US. The first national park in America, Yellowstone, celebrated its 150th anniversary in March and Yosemite will mark its 132nd in October. With more than 6,000 national parks across the world, supporters question Scotland’s lack of national parks compared to similar countries such as Norway, which has 29, and New Zealand, which has 14.
‘What they bring is conservation of the heritage, nature, landscape, a focus on climate change mitigation and nature restoration, but also, crucially, provision for people to come and enjoy walking, cycling, walking the dog, watersports, bird-watching and where there would be facilities like rangers, interpretation centres and toilets or wildlife hides or trails or maps,’ said Mr Mayhew, who helps spearhead umbrella body, the Scottish Campaign for National Parks.
‘What a national park really tries to do is marry looking after the special
‘You get economic benefits in the form of tourism’
qualities of an area with making it available to visitors in such a way that doesn’t damage the place itself. And when you get people visiting, you get economic benefits in the form of tourism.’
The public consultation had thrown up some unexpected suggestions, he added: ‘Somebody asked whether the East Neuk of Fife could be a national park and somebody else said national parks are not just for the countryside and why shouldn’t Glasgow be a national park?
‘That’s an interesting suggestion too, but these are just people with some time on their hands; they are not community campaigners with 700 members, who have... carried out 100 meetings and written a full-scale 100-page feasibility study.’ Yet, not everyone is enthusiastic about the plans, including influential farmers’ and landowners’ organisations.
Colin Ferguson, Dumfries and Galloway regional chairman of farmers’ union NFU Scotland, said it continued to ‘seek assurances’ that a new park would benefit agricultural businesses and the wider rural economy. He said it had ‘yet to be convinced’ that the plan was compatible with farming’s ‘ambitions and aims’, adding: ‘It is not yet clear to NFU Scotland what additional benefit or value could be driven through a new national park operating as a separate entity in the region but we continue to discuss the matter with all interested stakeholders.’
Others are more forthright. ‘I think something that people calling for national parks don’t always understand is that Scottish national parks are living, working entities,’ said Sarah-Jane Laing, of Scottish Land & Estates.
‘The conservation element of national parks is not about preservation. It’s about working with nature sympathetically but at the same time providing economic and social benefit.
‘They are not just playparks for urban visitors; people live there, they work there, they work the land and it has to really be a balance,’ she said.
It is a common misnomer, added Mrs Laing, that creating a national park means ‘nationalising’ the land. ‘Private owners still own the bulk of the land within Scotland’s two national park areas, which means it’s still businesses and farms and estates operating there who have worked very hard to involve communities and businesses in planning for the future and have moved over the last few years towards much more of a partnership approach,’ she said.
Yet, bestowing national park status can trigger unintended consequences, she warned.
A rise in second homes within the two existing national parks had long been a concern, adding to
‘They aren’t just playparks for urban visitors’
accommodation shortages for estate staff and those working in tourism and hospitality.
‘There are a number of estates in the Cairngorms who are trying desperately to attract employees and really struggling not only to find them, but also to secure housing for them,’ Mrs Laing said. ‘That affordable housing element within national parks is really crucial.
‘The knock-on effects of national park designation I’m not sure are always fully appreciated by those living in the Central Belt who might have a rather idyllic view of what more national parks would mean for Scotland.’
Mrs Laing, who farms near the Berwickshire village of Hume, remains unconvinced by the need for a Borders national park.
‘I think the South of Scotland Enterprise Agency as an economic enabler is a fantastic body and with the work that’s going on here with NatureScot and others, we are able to deliver all of the outcomes that would be desired for a national park without that status,’ she said.
Wherever the ultimate destination of Scotland’s third national park lies, the impact is likely to be felt far and wide.
As Muir himself once said: ‘When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.’