Wild Land News no 66, Spring 2006

COMMENT - "it's our landscape - and we're looking after it" Article

We had a valuable opportunity to meet with Deputy Minister for the Environment Rhona Brankin on a LINK delegation in early March to press for our 'Landscape' to be valued more highly. Coincidentally, the Scottish Executive section covering it (and SNH) has just been renamed 'Landscape and Habitats Division' - a hopeful portent?

Our main aim was to persuade her that 'landscape' is not just a Countryside Alliance, Tory-voter, Prince Charles kind of elitist interest, or a NIMBY thing - as some of her colleagues have said before. Hearteningly, the meeting could have been over in five minutes - this is clearly not how she sees it (perhaps helped by having lived on the Black Isle for 20 years). But we had plenty of extra arguments fashioned for her, in case any lurking Neanderthals proved harder to persuade that Scotland's landscape heritage is one of our most valuable - and perishable - assets.

Never mind the tourist pound, euro, and dollar; never mind the health benefits of the great outdoors; never mind selling Scotland-the-product with heathery hills and winding lochs as a backdrop - each with a department and a Minister to enlist support from. Jack McConnell himself has begun to say that our biggest longer-term challenge is to keep our own numbers up, with enough people to create the jobs, earn the wages, and pay for the pensions of an ever-ageing population. What better way to persuade capable, creative, entrepreneurial people to move here, to invest here, to stay here than to make sure our countryside (tame and wild, near and far) is well-cared-for and a sure refuge from the pressures of city and industrial life? That way, we might live up to Jack's brave claim that Scotland is the best small country...

Here's the letter we helped draft from LINK to Rhona Brankin - it has twelve specific 'helpful suggestions' for her, covering 'Raising the Profile', 'Protecting our Landscape' - on the back of the National Scenic Areas consultation (see below), and 'Investing in our Landscape'. Signing the European Landscape Convention gives us a platform for action here.