‘We Scots have evolved almost psychic bonds with the land, which help underpin our well-being’

means it is hard to provide up-to-date statistics that measure the properties’ national worth in financial terms, rather than their heritage significance.

Nevertheless, there are numbers out there that give pause for thought. For instance, a study conducted in 2007 found that the historic environment contributed more than £2.3 billion (2.6%) to Scotland’s economy and accounted for 2.5% of total employment.

Using 2012 figures, we can compare this to a £758 million contribution from agriculture and £255m from fisheries. We also know from Visit Scotland that domestic and international tourism generated £4.3bn in direct spending.

I know from personal experience how much NTS properties can contribute to local communities. Take Inverewe Garden and Estate in Ross-shire, for example. Osgood MacKenzie’s masterpiece is more than two hours from Inverness by road, and an hour and a half from Ullapool: it is not somewhere you drop by on the spur of the moment. However, the garden has become a destination that attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year, offsetting the disincentive of remoteness and helping to sustain the economic viability of nearby Poolewe. The garden is a major employer in the area, and the local B&Bs all benefit.

This is a scenario repeated across Scotland. Trust staff are more often than not drawn from the nearest communities, as are t he many volunteers that the NTS relies on. The trust is also committed to sourcing as many goods, services and skills as possible from the local area to keep properties functioning – notably the fresh produce offered in cafés and the items for sale in shops. We also employ armies of builders, plumbers, joiners, roofers, architects, surveyors etc. The list goes on.

Taken together, I would argue that the NTS and other conservation heritage operators across Scotland have made a real contribution to sustaining a great many communities over the long-term.

Indeed, there are studies that suggest that wild land and green spaces can indirectly contribute to our economy by acting as a ‘green lung’. Emerging evidence suggests that access to these places saves the NHS both time and money because of the mental and physical benefits they provide. Pilot programmes have resulted in some GPs ‘prescribing’ the countryside to patients as an alternative to expensive medicines and therapies.

Over the centuries, we Scots have evolved almost psychic bonds with the land, which help underpin our well-being. That is why the earliest NTS properties were iconic landscapes, such as Glencoe and Burg, on Mull, and why so many people fought for years to secure the right to roam.

Therefore, it saddens me that having fought for those rights, we, as a society, now seem ready to underestimate what these landscapes can do for us and accept unquestioningly the notion that they have value only once they are concreted over for commercial or industrial use. This would be a catastrophic mistake – undermining the very thing that has brought valuable and sustainable visitor income to Scotland seems ludicrously counterproductive.

Clearly Scotland does need infrastructure that keeps the lights on and allows us to trade with the world. But decisions about the locations and scale of this must be made on the basis of a balanced and well-rounded understanding of the bigger picture.

I have always felt that policymakers and the public need to take a greater interest in Scotland’s heritage; it is not just important to us in terms of our story as a nation and as communities, but economically too.