Expert: Too much spent attracting visitors, too little protecting wildlife
Scots have cared too much about attracting tourists to the countryside and not enough about the threatened wildlife living there, according to one leading expert.
Jim Crumley believes the country’s national parks should be focused on conservation while private landowners must have a legal responsibility for conserving wildlife habitats.
The leading nature writer, who has penned more than 30 books, also believes Scotland should follow the example of Yellowstone Park in America by reintroducing wolves.
He said: “There are some decent initiatives going on in Scotland but these are relatively limited responses to a huge nationwide problem.
“I think crisis-point is behind us, it’s over our shoulder.
“Instead of a policy that regards the landscape almost as sacred, we have one that is determined to bring in more and more tourism and development opportunities.
“We have Loch Lomond and Trossachs talking about Flamingo Land for heaven’s sake.
“The Trossachs is a fabulous area and the possibility for making a wildlife conservation showpiece out of it is limitless but nobody is doing it.
“We have huge problems in Scotland with the way our land is used, especially in the Highlands and the uplands in the south of the country where there is a big focus on deer forest and grouse moor.
“These are huge areas of land where the specific use that landowners make of the land is obliterating possibilities for biodiversity.
“Habitat is everything. If the habitat is there then the wildlife will be there.”
Mr Crumley also advocates reintroducing the wolf and giving legal protection to beavers as measures to boost biodiversity “have to start at the top”.
By putting the top predator back in place, it creates a “trophic cascade” which benefits every species further down the food chain.
He said: “Between them, a healthy wolf population and healthy beaver population create huge opportunities for diversity for almost all the other species.
“The most studied example has been Yellowstone Park where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 after an absence of about 70 years.
“The problem they had in Yellowstone at that time was over-grazing by huge numbers of elk.
“We have a comparable problem with red deer.
“Putting the top predator in place needs to come in tandem with doing everything we can to improve habitat.
“Once that process starts then nature grabs every opportunity imaginable.
“The best thing we can possibly do is to encourage nature to do the job itself.”
The Trossachs would make a fabulous conservation showpiece