Do we really need another National Park?
ArtWork's woman on the spot in deepest South West Scotland, Mary Gladstone, thinks not. She rather likes it the way it is – "slightly moribund and off the map."
IT'S INTERESTING that Galloway, a forgotten, slightly moribund part of the country may become Scotland's third National Park.
The first was Loch Lomond and the Trossachs (founded in 2002), followed by the Cairngorms a year later. The Scottish Government announced this summer that Galloway's proposal beat four other areas (Scottish Borders, Lochaber, Loch Awe and Tay Forest) and promised to create a third Scottish national park by the end of the 2026 parliamentary session. If Galloway is chosen, it will be a UK first in 15 years.
To gain national park status, an area must be set aside for the preservation of the natural environment, ensuring most of the landscape, plants and animals will be kept in their natural state.
However, at this point, Galloway's bid is not a done deal. NatureScot (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage), a Scottish government body, is investigating the area's suitability for national park status. After consulting local people, businesses and farmers, they will come to an informed (hopefully) decision.
Understandably, opinion is divided. In fields, on hillsides and along shorelines, signs have gone up with the words, NO GALLOWAY NATIONAL PARK, suggesting it's farmers and landowners who are against the proposal.
In some respects, this is true. Many are concerned about bureaucracy as they cope with new laws on controlling biodiversity and climate change. Others are afraid of 'interference from an unelected body', which will be the case if the region becomes a national park.
They ask if these officials would be better-qualified than the farmer himself, in running the countryside. Often an inter-generational occupation, farming encourages a family to preserve its land and keep it beautiful so that an area like Galloway, whose tapestry of hill, loch, field and coast, is a result of generations of farmers working on and improving the land. Another concern for farmers is the damage caused by visitors like wild campers who can leave a lot of mess behind them.
A common reservation for this region receiving national park status is its weak infrastructure, especially the roads. The A75 (Gretna to Stranraer) and A77 (Stranraer to Ayr) provide a link with the UK and the rest of Europe by connecting the Cairn Ryan ports to Northern Ireland.
However, the full potential of Southwest Scotland can't be realized until its roads are upgraded. Funds were promised by the previous UK government to bypass two villages on the A75 but improvements, like road-widening and straightening should also be undertaken.
A resident of the south Rhins, who lives near Drummore, the southernmost village in Scotland, suggests the Dumfries-Stranraer railway line (closed for over 50 years) should be re-instated. "It makes sense to use trains, as they do in USA, for freight. This is what we want for heavy goods being transported to and from Ireland."
There are other objections raised by the NO campaign. House prices would be pushed up beyond the means of local people. For decades, there has been a steady exodus of young people and families from the villages and towns, with the closing of schools, shops and post offices. Houses lie empty for most of the year, only to be used as second homes or holiday lets.
If the Lake District is anything to go by (and it is, of course, one of the UK's famed national parks), I shudder at the thought of my neck of the woods receiving a similar designation. Down there among Beatrix Potter's old haunts, everything is sign-posted and prescribed: double yellow lines painted along the roads whose verges are dotted with lamp-posts.
It's unrecognisable from Wordsworth's era with his pristine daffodils.
As for Robert Burns, who knew Galloway and lived all his short life in its next-door counties, his world of 'tim'rous mice' and dancing witches is as alien to us here as the dinosaur period.
Do we really need the undemocratically appointed status of a national park? Are we to be shoved, like First Nation indigenous people, into a reservation, fenced-off in a ghetto of 'let's-pretend-we're-authentically-rural' when it's patently obvious that we no longer are?
The YES campaign say that our new status would 'put Galloway on the map', give us pride in our area and serve as a beacon for a greener Scotland.
Who are they kidding? Will becoming a national park help with the steady degradation of the land, its plants and animals? Old Scots pines ravaged by gales, hedgerows decimated, cows no longer grazing in fields but shut up in byres 24/7, roadsides strewn with the corpses of foxes, hares, rabbits, deer, badgers, pheasants and hedgehogs (if there are any left to run over).
As for the Scottish Government's laws on bird protection, it hasn't begun to solve the urgent problem of droves of crows assaulting gardens and fields, the sight of which is reminiscent of the climax to a Hitchcock movie.
So, leave Galloway alone.
Keep it forgotten, slightly moribund and off the map, please.
