To the Editor:
In praise of National Parks
Galloway; 'Forgotten..moribund and off the map.'? No thanks. As a professional artist who's lived in Galloway for nearly twenty years and spent most of the last seven campaigning for a National Park, I was both bemused and disappointed by Mary Gladstone's opinion piece in the Winter edition of ArtWork.
There are many misconceptions here, the largest of which is that Galloway will somehow stay the same. Galloway is changing fast.
As a wildlife artist and lifelong naturalist I've witnessed, with great sadness, the landscape and our economy declining. There are fewer and fewer small mammals, birds do not reappear in the spring in their old haunts, the landscape is turning bright green with stones removed from fields, hedges disappearing, incessant muck-spreading and orange sprayed fields of glyphosate. Watercourses are dying. Commercial tree planting continues apace on and adjacent to unimproved nesting grounds for waders.
Meantime the youngsters are leaving; the population is falling and ageing, pay is below average and businesses are disappearing and not being replaced. There is a virtual shutdown in the west of the region from October to April. Two local galleries closed last year and in a remote area like this these represent real long term income stream losses that cannot easily be replaced.
This is what 'moribund' actually feels like and Galloway deserves better.
Why would anyone turn down central Government funding of approximately £10m per annum for an internationally recognised environmental designation, with all the inward investment and long term security for environmental projects that it would bring?
Scotland has only two National Parks, the last of which was designated 22 years ago. Its USP; its wonderful landscape, is in fact woefully under-proctected.
Meantime, our existing National Parks are widening their focus in response to the biodiversity crisis and working with partners to restore peatlands and create naturally regenerated woods as well as working with farmers to increase sustainability by reducing impacts on climate and biodiversity. Nobody wants a countryside 'set in aspic' and there are many new challenges to those who have created the landscape we all enjoy. A Park could support those who work, own and manage the land in meeting those challenges.
A Park is not an unelected body. Existing Scottish Park authorities have a combined local representation of approximately two thirds. They have barely any influence at all over farming except through advice, support and voluntary schemes; but a Park could, for example, help farmers (and others) who want to diversify into tourism or local food markets.
Of course people are afraid of Galloway becoming like the Lake District which now attracts approaching 20 million visitors a year. At present Galloway gets approximately 800,000, a figure which might gradually increase over many years to about 1,300,000 per annum.
It has huge capacity. Gentle growth will be manageable (with a Park Ranger service and investment in recreational facilities from which local people will also benefit), as well as good for our beleaguered economy.
Sadly by the time this letter is published the consultation period will have run its course. It would be a tragedy were Galloway to turn its back on the opportunity to become a National Park.
Lisa Hooper is a wildlife artist living and working in Galloway and is also a Trustee of the Galloway National Park Association, although the views expressed here are her own.
