UKC

A consultation has begun on a new National Park in Galloway. This includes key details such as the park boundary, how it should be governed, and what it ought to be called. But while the proposal has gained backing from some, not everyone is convinced a new Scottish National Park is a good idea, with farmers and some local residents strongly opposed.

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Whichever way the decision goes someone will be dealt an awful hand

You can view change with despair or accept it as an inevitable part of progress. You can adapt or 'rail against the system' as you try to stay still. 

The Merrick etc.

The only winners will be a few airbnb owners who see a modest increase in bookings.

Dual the A75 and the region could be transformed. In two minds as to ‘keep it quiet for myself’ or ‘more money would benefit the region’. Regardless Galloway or Lakes, Galloway wins every time.

Cue much misinformation, disinformation, hysteria and general gnashing of teeth followed by very little actually impact on the vast majority of people in the park.

If you believed the stuff that was getting shared on social media when Lochaber was still in the running you'd think a National Park was some sort of monster that was coming to eat your children.

Are you saying that a new national park would be a mini gaff?

Be careful, you might get banned for trooling.

This is the extent of the park. it's big and has most of the good bits. 

https://www.gov.scot/publications/proposal-scottish-ministers-national-park...

I'm in two minds, it's a lovely and underappreciated part of Scotland and it would take many many more visitors before it was even a little bit crowded compared to the Lakes. But what are the barriers to access that make the National Park designation necessary?  Vast swathes are empy hillside or dense foresty plantation. Go if you want to.  

I'd still recommend any farm, home, business that wishes to carry out any works that require planning permission to do it now, this includes things like putting solar panels on a house roof etc.. 

Why, it has good access already, making it a NP will just cause damage to the environment and more pressure on locals, some places are best left alone and quiet. 

There was a large opinion in favour of improved roads to allow modern industry to provide the levels of service and employment normal in other parts of the country and not turn it into a tourist trap in the video and discussion I saw a month or so back.

Improved roads would be a benefit. However, given the dire A9 dualling programme currently progressing at with glacial progress, I fear any road improvements would be a long way off. 

That's Transport Scotland right?

Yes. 11 miles in 11 years is not a great record of achievement. The aim is to complete Perth to Inverness by 2035. I am not optimistic. 

Worse than being thrown in the dungeon?

Far worse: verily you would be condemned to eternal jarkness.

I'm all ears for what the local* farmers have to say but if Scottish Land and Estates are against it then it's a priori a good idea.

*that excludes absentee landowners.

Sadly, as mentioned above, if it's anything like the reaction to the proposed Lochaber NP (which was really mostly about ways for existing organisations and locals to coordinate with each other and have more access to planning) then we'll witness a Brexit like campaign against change which will benefit nobody. In the meantime, existing 'vested interests' will work behind the scenes to their own advantage. 

Ah well...

That's the revised aim, it was meant to have been done already!

NPs aren't usually pro change, they have a habit of wanting to freeze things in time, with an idealised view of how buildings should look. Great if you're a B&B people will come to see what the fuss is about. Useless for meaningful employment, business, house prices for locals etc..

The problem stems from the fact most global NPs secure natural habitats, protect nature etc.. most uk NPs are man made terrain and often less species rich than places around them. The trend of holding barren hills on a pedestal continues. 

Yeah I agree that this is what the current national parks appear to be but the remit of the proposed national parks, at least Lochaber, was somewhat different. It was most definitely not like the Lake District. 

One of the proposed things the Lochaber National Park was going to try to address was the traffic problems on the A82 for instance and it would help acheive this through coordination of existing resource and by moving some planning reviews locally rather than at a Highland level (in other words via inverness). This may have been able to modify the development of the Glen Etive hydros for instance. 

What it wouldn't do is say "Scotland looks like this and we'll keep it the same". 

The fact that it is called a National Park doesn't mean it acts like all previous National Parks (which was completely missed by rabid any-park crowd that seemed to think we could either have a National Park or a new Hospital, missing the fact that the National Park actually raises local revenue and funding which might help develop a more suitable Hospital and it could also inform the planning about how it should cope with tourist demand (something the original hospital designs missed completely)

Looks like it snakes its way around the Arecleoch wind farm. I wonder if this would restrict further development of green energy?

Galloway also makes up a substantial percentage of the UK’s timber plantations. I can’t imagine FLS will be thrilled with any further regulation that would no doubt be anti-conifer. I wonder if this would have a long term detrimental effect on the UK’s long term timber supplies? Love them or hate them, you can’t argue against the carbon storage utility and sustainable resource they provide. Cut it down somewhere else and import it will probably be the answer.

This is perhaps one of the biggest positives for me. Walks like Screel hill and Criffel have been decimated by thoughtless harvesting and what were once popular walks have become barren wastelands that few people visit. Screel was half harvested and then the exposed tree line fell like dominoes in the first storm rendering what used to be a lovely forest walk opening up onto a ridgeline with views across the Solway completely unpassable and closed to access, now just a 4x4 track diversion up the back. It's been like that for years and it's such a shame. I have fond memories of walking the dogs up past the little burn with my Mum as a kid and it being my first regular hill run. The burn is long bulldozed away and the whole hillside is just an inaccessible waste land. Criffel was the same, lovely forest walk from New Abbey opening up into hillside, I went there last week and it's clear very few people have walked up that way since the harvesting started. A few years ago a lot of work went into building an excellent path up the bog which is now overgrown through lack of use, it's just an unpleasant place to be. The only two hills in the east of the region that are challenging enough but small enough to be accessible by many who wouldn't venture into the Galloway Hills. No one is saying don't harvest, but I really hope when they replant it they remove the fallen trees, put some thought into reopening the path and plant a deciduous barrier which can be left alone to provide a long term natural habitat for wildlife and an accessible walk for future generations to enjoy. Even then, it will take 50 years to return it to anything like it was. The absolute and total destruction to the natural habitat and the wanton removal of popular and accessible walks like that is unjustifiable and sadly the forestry have proved they are not responsible guardians. And they want me to pay to use their pot holed car parks!

On the NP more generally, we remember the massive influx of people during covid and a lot of locals are worried about that as the local infrastructure couldn't cope. However the last two summers D&G has been like a ghost town and we could do with more visitors. One of the biggest issues for local business is finding staff, particularly with the drop in foreign workers. There is no where to house them, hardly any of our staff can afford to live locally so we have to try and accommodate them onsite but that has massive issues. Any NP needs to do something to sort out housing in the area as a first priority but I can't see it having anything other than a detrimental effect and making it harder to accommodate seasonal workers, which we will need more of if the NP goes ahead.

The NP first priority is to make sure the CEO has an enormous salary and huge paid for accommodation. The actual park infra-structure is low down the priority list. Plenty staff telling local planning authorities what is now allowed, ie not very much. The money coming from Gov should be allocated to D&G for road improvement and forget about a NP. 

A quick look at the land management plan produced by FLS shows that most of the felling you outlined was part of a plant health notice clearfell used to remove p. Ramorum infected larch trees. Storm Arwen then exacerbated the problem (as most commercial forestry in the Scottish Borders and Northumberland will attest). The plan appears to be to replant with lower density Scots pine on the lower slopes sympathetically to the topography, transitioning to broadleaves. The area immediately west of the car park is a planted ancient woodland site (PAWS), the plan they had outlined that this was due to be transitioned by slowly thinning the conifers and restoring the ancient woodland. Storm Arwen had other ideas, hence the clearfell.

I could go on. But it’s better if you just read the 73 page FLS plan yourself.

Natural habitat? No. It was commercial conifer. The plan is apparently to restore it to more a more sympathetic environment, dramatically reducing the commercial aspect of Screel hill in the future.

Wanton removal of a popular walk? It wasn’t planned or desired apparently, but these things happen. Maybe if people put a few more £ in the car park they would be incentivised to open it quicker. Interestingly that particular walk is looked after by Dumfries and Galloway Council, but I can’t imagine them stumping up the cash.

Unjustifiable? Maybe not if you read the paragraphs of justification in their plans.

I don’t know what more you could want them to do. But as I said, most people just want their timber grown in someone’s else’s country, felled and imported.

No, I don’t work for FLS.

Your characterisation of Scottish National Parks is not my experience; I live in CNPA and having gone through planning for a new build and watched other similar projects don’t recognise your grumbles. Similarly I know from experience that putting solar on existing roofs does not tend to be problematic. 
 

while some farmers and landowners do grumble about CNPA, many others see them doing a reasonable job. They’re certainly not seeking to preserve the land and its settlements and ecosystems in aspic as far as I can see. 
 

Seems like I was a little harsh! Thanks for the info

And they're ready to complete the job during the upcoming phases with an at-grade roundabout in the middle of the road at Dunkeld - because the existing ones near Perth & Inverness never end up snarled up in traffic...

D&G might be better off if Transport Scotland continues to forget they exist.

Yes, I can only believe that is being done on cost grounds. A roundabout will be much cheaper than the necessary bridges, but experience suggests it will not ease traffic flow. I remember the old roundabout at Cumbernauld before the M80 was completed, and it was almost always snarled up. I'm in my 70s now and I would not be surprised if the A9 dualling is not complete while I am still driving. 

There's hope yet, but sadly the English NPs aren't so flexible or modern in their outlook. 

I did a lot of research around the proposed Lochaber plan and the actual on the ground implementation of the National Park is designed to fit the area. Outcomes such as planning applications being managed locally instead of at govenment or council level means that it's mostly biased toward locals. 

The biggest benefit of the NP for Lochaber would have been that it forces all interest groups to get together and talk to each other and then to report on how outcomes are directed by these conversations. The conclusion I drew is that it helps communicate worries about local issues and can't force things on the local population.