Campaigners against a new national park in Galloway have reacted with fury after the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Mairi Gougeon, snubbed a meeting in the Scottish Parliament to discuss the need for a review of the two existing parks.
The round table discussion on Thursday (April 3) was arranged by Pam Gosal, the Scottish Conservative MSP for West Scotland, and was attended by two other Scottish Conservative MSPs, Stephen Kerr and Finlay Carson, and the SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Fergus Ewing.
A petition calling for an independent review of the two existing Scottish national parks before a third is created is currently before the Scottish Parliament’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee and has nearly 4,000 signatures.
A group of campaigners came up from Galloway to speak at the event, where they were joined by campaigners from Lochaber who had successfully persuaded the Scottish Government not to select their region for the third park.
Ms Gougeon declined to attend the event, and none of her senior officers were present to report back. Instead, Ms Gosal will write to Ms Gougeon to convey the view of the meeting that an independent performance review of the existing parks was long overdue.
No Galloway National Park founder Denise Brownlee said, “People came a long way to attend the meeting, and it was disrespectful and rude for it not even to have been attended by an officer, never mind a minister.
“Maybe minds are already made up, but I find it very hard to understand why anyone in government who is considering such a big decision would not want to hear from the people who have to live with the reality of a national park.”
Debbie Carmichael, who led the Lochaber National Park No More campaign added, “A third national park was not an SNP commitment, but was one of the demands from the Green Party when they did the Bute House coalition deal, but no-one from the Greens came to the meeting.
“It’s a disgrace that politicians who want to foist this bureaucratic waste of money on communities can’t even be bothered to listen to their concerns,” she said.
The meeting heard from former councillor Sally Page, who described her experience of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park as “intrusive and disturbing” and that tourism had been put before local concerns, and hotspots like Luss were being overwhelmed. She also said that planning application conditions were not being monitored and cited the lack of an environmental impact study when permission was being sought for the now abandoned Tom Hunter Leadership Centre plan.
Gareth Bourhill, Secretary of the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association, said: “We believed there would be benefits but the opposite is the truth. The only time we hear from them it’s what they want from us, not what they can do for us.”
Jamie Williamson, whose family has farmed near Aviemore since 1927, said that residents in the Cairngorm National Park felt disenfranchised and the national park board was not representative of their views.
“When it started, they had 52 staff and now it’s up to 110 and they promote the area as a nice place to retire, go on holiday or commute from,” he said.
“The number of over 70s has gone up by 90 per cent, so we’re investing in wood chips for the crematorium. It’s no good for zipwires, but it’s fine for orthopaedic surgeons. We would very much welcome a review of the parks. Do they do what they are supposed to do?”
Nick Kempe, the author who runs the parkswatchscotland website, said that National Parks had not delivered what was promised, and were really run by civil servants in Edinburgh. “Local members are silenced and can’t speak out,” he said. “They are centralised and are undemocratic.”
Finlay Carson MSP told the meeting he feared the Natural Environment Bill now going through the Scottish Parliament, which changes the way national parks are run, would be amended “with some crazy stuff” just before becoming law. The two national parks had been an “unmitigated disaster” said Fergus Ewing MSP. “An independent review by some serious people who have spent their lives in a national park should carry it out,” he added.
You can read a copy of the meeting notes by clicking here.