Gamekeepers publish a report attacking the failure of SNP ministers and their predecessors to ever draw up a strategy to protect the country’s “signature treasure”
By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor
6:12PM GMT 08 Dec 2015
Scotland’s iconic moorlands are being decimated by “unthinking” government policies that ignore the “defining role” they have played in the nation’s history and psyche, gamekeepers have warned.
The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) published a report attacking the failure of SNP ministers and their predecessors to ever draw up a strategy to protect the country’s “signature treasure”.
They estimated that 20 per cent of heather moorland disappeared between 1940 and 1970 and a further 500,000 hectares is under threat from the Scottish Government’s forestry strategy of having trees planted on a quarter of land by 2050.
But they argued this afforestation strategy fails to take into account the “significant economic benefit” that moorland provides Scotland through industries such as farming, tourism and renewable energy.
Neither does it pay any heed to the preservation of species such as the curlew, they argued, which last week was put on the “red list” of birds conservationists consider are at greatest risk.
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