Wind farm pylons: steel giants of the glens: In the rush to meet wind farm targets, pylons and turbines are blighting our countryside. A vision for the entire nation: partly built pylons at the start of the Beauly to Denny power line. It is a preview of what may await much of wild Britian. In the dramatic countryside west of Inverness, a single-track road pitches and turns between dark purple hills and the fast-flowing River Beauly. Then you round a corner and find a scene of total destruction.
Along a strip 300 yards wide, the trees have been ripped out, leaving nothing but stumps and bare, scarred earth. It looks like the Space Shuttle has crashed into the hillside – except that it stretches into the distance farther than you can see.
In fact it stretches, or soon will do, for 140 miles, through the heart of the Highlands, Europe’s largest upland wilderness. And above the scorched earth is rising the first of 600 electricity pylons, each the height of a 15-storey tower block, dominating mountains and ridgelines as they go. It is a preview of the future for much of wild Britain. As The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week, hundreds of miles of new pylon lines are planned across the country’s finest landscapes to serve the ever-growing wind industry. This one, from Beauly to Denny, near Stirling, is the first.
“In 2002, you could stand in 41 per cent of Scotland and see no visual impact from built development,” says Helen McDaid, of the John Muir Trust, which campaigns for wild land. “By 2009, it was down to 28 per cent, largely due to wind farms.” That figure, produced by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), will be even lower by now. It fell by 3 per cent in 2008 alone. But it has not been updated since – Scotish Natural Heritage (SNH) say that they were “working on it” but it was “complicated”. Well if this appalling situation isn’t addressed soon there will be no Natural Heritage left in Scotland to protect.
Wind farm developers appear to have Carte Blanche to throw up these things where-ever they want, with land designations under various EU wildlife/habitat directive seeminly having little baring – can anyone explain this state of affairs to me??
Farming, forestry and wind turbines, none of which would operate in the way it does without government handouts, when that changes what do we have left…………habitat devoid of native wildlife !
What does Scotland have that will generate REAL money ?…………….it’s landscape and wildlife
All those businesses that benefit from wildlife tourism BEWARE, It is your lively-hood that is under threat.
From Denmark, the land of wind turbines. This comment says it all.
‘Jytte Kaad Jensen, chief economist for Eltra, Denmark ‘s biggest electricity distributor. “In just a few years we’ve gone from some of the cheapest electricity in Europe to some of the most costly.”
The reduction in subsidy for wind farms cannot come soon enough or be large enough to protect our landscape, biodiversity and last remaining wild spaces.
Consider or estimate the carbon footprint of this mess.
Lets start with. Destruction of peat bogs. Destruction of trees, especially ancient ones.
Carbon release from excavation. Metal mining, transportation and fabrication.
Extraction of rare earth components. Miles of cables and pylons
Construction energy and transport costs.
Landfill.
The damage to water courses.
The destruction and loss of utterly wild landscapes which is irreplacable.
The loss of habitat and biodiversity.
The list is endless and for what? Utterly pathetic wind generation for which we already pay for dearly on our ever increasing energy bills.
Well said otter!!
IT GETS WORSE; SOMETHING SERIOUS IS GOING ON IN SCOTLAND AND NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
Poison fears after a THIRD golden eagle is found dead in just three weeks, how many such incidents have been missed? Are these killing out of control? Are they representative of a systematic connection between the proliferation of wind farms and the intentional cleansing of Golden Eagles from parts of the Highlands to allow such development to continue unhindered?
I wouldn’t be suprised – Hen Harriers have already crashed in Wind farm areas in Southern Scotland