Save Our Common Mountain Environment

Today is a beautiful day.
The deep blue sky glows above the gold of the autumn birches. Silence, except for the rustle of a gentle breeze in the aspen trees. You can see for miles, and as you wander closer to the river Moriston, the occasional splash of a leaping trout, or was it a salmon?

Glenmoriston, the road to the isles just by Loch Ness is considered by many the most beautiful of the Scottish glens. Tourists from all over the world return here because of the glen’s unique aura of peace. I know because I speak to them frequently. Glenmoriston is a special place in the hearts of all who have experienced it. From America to Australia, from the Netherlands to Namibia this place, Glenmoriston , they tell me, holds the spirit of Scotland.

In the early 1930’s, the traveller H. V. Morton wrote: “Fifteen miles of beauty lie between hills. They are called Glenmoriston. There is dark Loch Cluanie, there are scraggy deer forests, then the glen seems suddenly to peal with laughter as the road dives into thick birch woods alive with rabbits. ….what a perfect glen this is.”

Finally over spectacular waterfalls the river Moriston tumbles into Loch Ness. Glenmoriston starts on the banks of Loch Ness and runs parallel to the Great Glen, Loch Ness and the Caledonian Canal for the first nine miles or so before it peels off westward towards the Five Sisters of Kintail – some of the most popular of the Munroes – and on to the mystical Eilan Donan Castle and the road to Skye.

The 400 metres high hill between Glenmoriston and Loch Ness is a treat to climb. It isn’t difficult as the ancient drover’s road crosses it here, but from the top you can see across Loch Ness, Fort Augustus and Glenmoriston. The rush of energy, of spirit that you feel at the splendour of that view, perhaps the best in the highlands of Scotland, sustains and renews you. We are of the earth and the earth has little to show more incredible than this.

For thousands of years the wild birds, the eagles who hover here have been a part of this landscape. A landscape that people cross the world to see and feel for themselves.
But that is today. And that was so for the millions of yesterdays that created this beauty.
Tomorrow it will be gone. It is proposed that this very place be industrialised with more than twenty 380 foot high, 110 metre structures made of concrete and steel. Roads will be torn through the heather and the bedrock broken and filled with concrete as huge vehicles bring these, the new Loch Ness monsters to destroy this landscape perhaps for ever.
If the local or national government of the area received planning requests to build twenty or more buildings bigger than the London Park Lane Hilton here, they would have laughed. Structures that dwarf Big Ben and Nelson’s Column – it must be a joke.

But no, it is no joke. It is real and is about to receive planning permission. These monsters are wind turbines. Thus in their blind dogmatic scramble for the profits of renewable energy the people behind this wanton destruction of one of Britain’s, even Europes’ finest landscapes can think only of the profits involved.

It must be the profits. After all, it can’t be the electricity. These turbines are notorious for being intermittent and unsuitable for grid energy production. And anyway, Glenmoriston alone already produces approximately 5 percent of Scotland’s energy needs in the underground hydro power stations already there. Good energy, renewable energy achieved with no visible damage to the environment and not even seen by the passing tourists. If it isn’t the profits that are motivating them then the only explanation left is vandalism, and surely our politicians are not vandals….
Windpower has developed from an idea to an obsession. Scotland is already more than self sufficient in energy without any huge windfarms. In fact it exports power to England. So why is it that there are applications for more than a hundred of these monster windfarms across Scotland, three of them around Loch Ness?

Loch Ness has very little industry and is sustained largely by tourism. Loch Ness is probably the most famous lake in the world and more than four million people visit the area every year. It isn’t to find the Loch Ness monster, although everyone casts an eye over the sullen beauty of the loch from time to time. No, it is to gasp at the extraordinary scenery and participate in the breathtaking landscape. To walk, to climb or just to wander through a place that nature has built out of gargantuan proportions and of incredible beauty.

To destroy this landscape, part of the world’s heritage, is a crime. It is a crime that is about to be committed for short term greed and political expediency. If you have a voice, now is the time to raise that voice.

Ray Berry.
January 2004.
Reproduced by the kind consent of the author, Ray Berry.