Turning a blind eye to biodiversity loss
Just how does the Scottish Government’s commitment to planting 45,000 acres of forest each year between now and 2050 work to mitigate the biodiversity crisis?
How does planting single species monoculture forest using a non-native, highly invasive tree like Sitka spruce (in the south of Scotland 85% of all trees planted over the last decade were conifers) support our environment and our ecosystems?
These genetically manipulated trees smother out all other forms of plant life, ‘invade’ peatland areas and acidify our waterways to the extent our burns are left “devoid of life” (Galloway Fisheries Trust, GFT) as electro-fishing surveys frequently record.
An eroded water course runing through a Sitka spruce plantation outside Dalry - nothing but moss grows in the dim undercanopy and there is an essentially eerie silence and noticeable lack of birdsong.
These forests also decimate ground nesting bird populations of “international conservation importance” (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, RSPB).
First among these birds is the Eurasian curlew who, along with its other curlew cousins (two species of which are already extinct), were recently described as “the most threatened group of birds on the planet” by one of largest conservation charities in the world, Birdlife International. In the UK the eminent conservationist Derek Ratcliffe estimated 5,000 breeding pairs of curlew were lost from the south of Scotland due to the afforestation of the Galloway and Border hills – “in addition many more pairs were lost on surrounding farmland due to forest edge effect”. Yet the Scottish Government pays millions of pounds of taxpayers money to the forest/ tax avoidance industry to destroy thousands of acres of breeding habitat every year of this bird dubbed “the panda of UK conservation”.
Derek Ratcliffe, described as Britain’s finest field naturalist and the man at the forefront of the creation of the Nature Conservation Review (the bible of UK conservation) did much of his fieldwork on the hills around Lochinvar in the Glenkens, an area he loved and frequently visited, and an area he considered had the greatest population density of curlew he’d ever come across.
Ironically, the last significant area of open land around Lochinvar that hasn’t been decimated by plantation forestry (yet), and an area still used by curlews, is under imminent threat of afforestation by yet another Sitka plantation at Duchrae farm, Dalry.
The really ironic part is Derek Ratcliffe was an instrumental figure in the setting up of Nature Conservancy, the body that after devolution became Scottish Natural Heritage and which has subsequently been rebranded as NatureScot.
Yet this supposed public body that Ratcliffe did so much to bring into creation under the terms of an agreement/ gagging order which it was forced by government to sign with Scottish Forestry is now essentially forbidden to comment on or raise an objection to any forest project unless the land has a specific designation such as SSSI status.
How can this toothless, gagged and neutered organisation that can neither speak up for the Glenkens' curlews or comment on forestry matters be trusted to run an impartial consultation process on the proposed Galloway National Park? Considering at least a thirs of Galloway is the very plantation forestry that has so mcuh poisoned our hills and left our burns and rivers "devoid of life" on which NatureScot is forbidden to comment upon, it would seem this role will require of NatureScot , a pretty amazing ability to 'look the other way'. Perhaps they'll just add a blindfold to their consultation kitbag!
Jim Ramsay, Dalry.
This article is part of a series of readers' responses to the Galloway National Park proposal published in the Glenkens Gazette Issue 145. Read the others in the series below.
The Glenkens Gazette, Glenkens Hub and Glenkens Community & Arts Trust do not have a view for or against the National Park proposal. We are, however, committed to helping our communities find the information they need to make up their own mind. To support this, we host an information page on the Hub and are publishing articles in the Gazette periodically. If you have any questions about the proposal do get in touch and we will see if we can find the right people for an answer!