ON the one side, there’s the incongruous alliance of a couple of vegetarians backed by livestock farmers and a diverse bunch of protesters.
On the other side are a number of influential organisations and individuals who believe a national park in south-west Scotland would benefit the area and who are bemused by the opposition.
On the face of it, each side has persuasive arguments – but the debate has become so polarised that it is hard to see how there can now be a consensus.
This week, in fact, a motion calling for a referendum on the proposed national park is to be put to a vote at Dumfries and Galloway Council.
Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon has already dismissed the idea as unnecessary because of an ongoing consultation – but Independent councillor Dougie Campbell, who has lodged the motion, said the consultation was “dividing our communities in a way I have never seen before”.
A bid for the region to become Scotland’s third national park was announced as successful by the Scottish Government in July but the consultation run by NatureScot was not launched until three months later and ends mid-February.
It gives the choice of three sizes for the proposed park, with the biggest reaching into Ayrshire, and all three including Galloway.
Protesters claim the park appears to be a fait accompli and that the consultation lacks detail of what exactly is involved.
However, the idea did not exactly come out of the blue as it was mooted first in 2017 as a way of improving the fortunes of the area.
“The area has fallen behind progressively for many years now,” said John Thomson, chair of the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere which, together with the Galloway National Park Association, put together the bid for the park.
“If we go back to the 1950s, it was one of the richest rural areas in Scotland and now it is just about the poorest so I don’t think anyone can really pretend it is in a good place.”
Thomson, who is also vice-chair of the Scottish Campaign for National Parks said the ageing population in the region was also a concern.
“The whole population of the country is getting older but it is getting older faster in south-west Scotland and we are losing a lot of young people.”
He said that when the Galloway National Park Association first held meetings about the proposal in 2017, it didn’t appear to create a strong opposition but that is certainly not the case now.
When the announcement was made in July, Denise Brownlee, a former ranger at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, was incensed – and with the help of her neighbour Liz Hitschmann, set about campaigning against it.
The fact that they are both vegetarians and have won the backing of farmers who fear more restrictions on their working practices does amuse them.
“Liz and I have hee haw to do with farming but at the moment we have got to band together regardless of politics to stop this park,” said Brownlee.
In a short time, their No Galloway National Park Facebook group has garnered 3000 members – roughly the same number as the Galloway National Park Association’s which has been running considerably longer.
One of the main objections is that the infrastructure in the area – including the A75 which is the main route for lorries to the ferries to Ireland – is not fit for any more traffic, particularly tourist traffic like campervans and caravans.
There is also concern that the objective of the park will be to attract more tourists. It is claimed the area is already struggling to cope due to a shortage of hospitality staff because of the ageing population and lack of affordable housing for younger people.
“In 2017, the idea was to encourage more people but in the intervening times we have had Covid, more people are having staycations and tourist numbers are up by 20%,” said Brownlee.
“I was a ranger and it was a dream job apart from the people. Disposable BBQs caused fires and we were cleaning up everywhere. There were shopping trolleys full of Buckfast and cans of Tennent’s and there were even abandoned three-piece suites where someone had set up a big campsite for a party.”
However, according to Thomson, attracting tourists is not the be-all and end-all of the proposed park.
“It is much more than that – it is about saying that actually this is a special place that needs to be appreciated and looked after which is really the argument for national parks more generally,” he said.
“The real opportunity that you have in Galloway as a national park is that you can encourage more tourists but you can also deliberately plan ahead for them so that you don’t get the sort of problems that the North Coast 500, for example, has created. If people had thought about the investment that was needed before the North Coast 500 had been set up, we would not have had an awful lot of the problems we have had since.”
He said that while it wasn’t healthy to have an economy that was overdependent on tourism, there was still scope for increasing the income from tourists, not least by extending the season.
“Tourism is a part of it but I don’t think tourism is all of it, by any means,” said Thomson.
Hitschmann and Brownlee are sceptical of the claim that a national park would help keep young people in the region and believe that national park status would just drive up house prices.
“We just laugh because in the Cairngorm National Park, the number of over-65s is 57% higher than the rest of Scotland because they can afford to retire there,” said Brownlee.
However, Thomson said: “I don’t think folk from the Cairngorm National Park would accept that. House prices there have pretty much shadowed house prices elsewhere in Scotland.”
He also disputes that farmers would be put at a disadvantage if the area had national park status.
“There are very few additional restrictions – only some minor things relating to prior notification requirements for agricultural buildings.
“I think one of the strengths of the Galloway case is that it contains a very broad range of different types of landscape and habitats,” he said.
“You would be taking an area that does exhibit all these different characteristics and saying, ‘how do we actually not just protect what is good about it at the moment but how do we really make it even better?’.”
Thomson added that a Galloway park could also be expected to include some coast which would make it very different from Scotland’s two existing national parks.
“The coast would be an important feature and attraction of the area and a lot of thought would have to be given to just what managing the coast means – particularly at a time when we are already experiencing and expecting more sea level rises and more storm surges. Is this an area where we could experiment a bit with the sort of approaches that make sense in dealing with those future challenges?”
That may sound laudable but it is this lack of detail about the exact nature of a national park in the region that is infuriating those opposed. They also argue that another layer of bureaucracy is not needed when there are existing authorities who could do the job.
“If you are joining a consultation, you should be told what you are consulting on,” said Hitschmann.
“We are asked to give our views but we don’t know what size it is going to be, what the legislation is and what powers it will have.”
Thomson conceded there had been a “significant failure” in the consultation process due to a “long hiatus” between the announcement in July and the issue of the consultation paper in November.
“That was the time when a lot of people wondered what it was all about and many got the impression they were being sold some sort of pig in the poke,” he said.
“I think if they were doing it again, they would have to try and avoid that situation.”
However, Thomson added that the national park should be seen as a tool to help address issues in a particular area.
“The legislation is pretty broad-brushed and flexible so you can tailor it to your own needs,” he said.
“It is about bringing together a lot of different bodies and getting them to sign up to a common vision for the area and committing to delivering that. It is a facilitating, empowering, co-ordinating and enabling role which very much makes the staff the servants of the people.”
Thomson admitted more staff would be needed but pointed out that this would bring more permanent jobs to the area.
“One of the benefits is that the focus would be on the west of the region which would counter the trend for a lot of that activity to be concentrated on Dumfries,” he said.
“The smaller towns have lost both private sector and public sector jobs and doing something to reverse that would help to counter some of those past trends.”
