Hills pay the price of ‘green crusade’

Dear Editor I recently drew attention to the renewable companies industrialising our bonny Ochil Hills.

There has been a definitive “creep” wherever there is easy access. The swathe that has been cut through the woods on the southern slopes, to accommodate the super pylons is bad enough, but that is nothing to what you find when you get up there.

An access road from the A9 for heavy plant. Fences everywhere and metal gates at the start of the Dumyat trail. Red warning signs, something I never dreamed I would ever see on what was once an open wild countryside. Even a T-junction with white lines, the lot.

I climbed up where a path used to be, but now obliterated, the trees and bushes gone. The wee spring half way up that used to gurgle away, crystal clear, now a muddy quagmire.

How I wished that Fergus Ewing, Energy Minister in the Scottish Government, could have stood beside me, and seen what his” green crusade” has done, to what was once a beautiful place. Where you could have been as one with nature.

Scotland is paying a heavy price, for what purpose? A country that exports electricity and has, reportedly, reached its renewable targets!

Why else would we have a surplus! Time for the leader of the “green crusade” to think again. Time to consider the recent report, that our country is the least wooded country in Europe (18%) and has failed, miserably, to achieve the projected aim to increase our wooded areas. Time for Fergus to doff his hat.