Windfarms can bring great benefit to the area
Sir – Giving evidence at last week’s Strathy South wind farm inquiry, one thing became clear to me quite quickly and the many others gathered to represent the local community support.
It rapidly became clear to me that amongst those in the upper ranks of the John Muir Trust, RSPB and Wild Land Limited (WLL), the attitudes towards crofting communities which prevailed at the time of the Highland Clearances are still very much alive and kicking.
This becomes less shocking if you consider the third of these three organisations (WLL) – all notably big landowners – is run by a Danish billionaire keen on buying up country estates in Highland Scotland in order to fulfil his ‘philosophy’ of creating wilderness.
We were helpfully informed by the WLL and JMT planning representative Ian Kelly – calling for refusal of the wind farm alongside the RSPB – that each of his client’s vast Scottish estates employs one or two full time members of staff. Patrick Sellar eat your heart out.
The public inquiry has seen the local people of Strathy and Armadale gather once again – giving up their precious time at the height of lambing season up here – to support the SSE wind project. We were told today by Mr Kelly that this show of support was simply ‘opportunistic’ due to our desire for community investment. Us?!
Opportunistic for showing passionate support of a wind farm proposal next to our remote and depopulating villages? We certainly are. Us, the people of Strathy and Armadale, opportunistic for supporting the first project ever to give us genuine hope for the delivery of large-scale investment in our community? Yes indeed. Us, opportunistic to want to see the valuable restoration of thousands of hectares of damaged peatland in the precious Flow Country brought forward? Why yes!
The fact is that Mr Kelly is spot on, although this may not have been the intended purpose of his patronising approach. The truth is the strength of feeling in support of this wind farm is in a big part due to the large scale rural investment the wind farm promises.
Investment in line with what we are already seeing delivered by SSE at the nearby Strathy North wind farm – due to start generating renewable energy later this year. Highland businesses are thriving from that investment, with millions already ploughed into the Highland economy.
The project is also delivering, not just promising, ongoing income for us through the community benefit fund linked to the wind farm which injects a very welcome £170,000 into our local groups and initiatives for 25 years.
But a fundamental point Mr Kelly chose to ignore is that the pursuit of money to keep our remote way of life going is by no means the only reason we support this particular project – one the RSPB are at such pains to discredit.
As a local crofter and member of the Strathy and Armadale Community Council who has lived and worked in this part of Sutherland all my life I take pride in telling lawyers from the John Muir Trust, RSPB, Wild Land Limited and the Scottish Government Reporter that my homeland, its environmental importance, and its stunning beauty, are nothing short of sacred to me.
The damage that was caused to our Flow Country in the 1980s through poor decision making where thousands of hectares of peatland were drained to make way for commercial conifers is heartbreaking.
The best part of the Strathy South wind farm proposal is that – apart from the relatively miniscule interference the turbine bases will have on some raised levels of ground – restoration of a truly immense swathe of dried out peat bog (around 50 times greater than the impact area the wind farm itself would have) will be funded as a direct result of the project.
Restoration on this scale would simply never realistically be funded by other means since it is so expensive; indeed the RSPB was forced to admit yesterday that while they support repair of the degraded peat, they have no plans to take such action on anywhere approaching the scale the SSE plan can deliver.
The restoration is expensive because the area of damage is so great and in many parts requires the laborious process of removing the peat-destroying trees.
It also entails re-wetting the miles of deliberately irrigated tracts that had been prepared for commercial plantation. The follow-up peatland management process then involves intensive working with the UHI and takes many years.
We heard from world peat expert Dr Tom Dargie yesterday that the sooner this process can be started, the better as far as the formation of new peat is concerned.
To finish up, while it may be the luxury of Mr Wild Land from his home in Denmark to dictate that preservation of wilderness is preferable to Strathy South wind farm, maybe he can look again at this application and realise it is not what it might first seem.
Not only is the wind farm many miles away from his extensive landholdings, it offers renewable energy with the added, unusual aspect of healing a precious peatland that may be lost forever without restoration. And last but not least a healthy economic income for a very remote rural Highland community.
His own consultant has branded us opportunistic. Maybe, just maybe, Mr Wild Land can appreciate that position more than most.
Joyce Campbell
Armadale Farm
Armadale
Strathy.
