Why Scottish Government has made right decision over Galloway National Park

Scotland needs to do more to protect the natural world, but any measures need to have popular support

According to the US National Park Service, the 19th-century Scottish conservationist John Muir was “more than just an observer of the wilderness; he was its fiercest advocate. His passion for the land drove him to protect the places he held dear, ensuring that future generations could experience their beauty”.

After moving to America as a child, Muir’s writings about the natural world inspired the creation of the world’s first national parks in the 1870s. However, it was not until 2002 that Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park became the first in the country of his birth, quickly followed by another in the Cairngorms.

Proposals to create a third in Galloway initially seemed to be going well but ran into considerable local opposition and the Scottish Government has now concluded that the strength of feeling against the idea means it cannot proceed.

A map showing the proposed boundary of the Galloway National Park, which will not now go ahead | contributed

A place where people live and work

Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon told MSPs that 57 per cent of responses to the consultation process from local people and organisations were opposed. She added that she realised the decision would “be very disappointing for those who have been campaigning for a new national park in Galloway over many years”.

That disappointment, by those who see themselves as the ideological descendants of Muir, is understandable as clearly the area is wilder than many parts of Scotland, and a national park would have had some benefits.

But Galloway is also a place where people live and work. Forcing new controls designed to protect nature upon a reluctant population would have been foolish.

In recent years, public suspicions that ‘consultation’ processes simply rubber-stamp what the government was planning to do anyway have grown. This decision shows that is no longer the case, if indeed it ever was. It does not mean that national parks have no place in Scotland, but it does mean they must be responsive to local people’s opinions.

If Muir was alive today, he would surely argue forcefully that nature-depleted Scotland must do more to protect its flora and fauna, and he’d be right. But any measures need to have the kind of popular support that he was able to inspire or, ultimately, they will fail.