Forested Area of Scotland Returned to Bog

AP ^ | Dec 30, 2002 | JANE WARDELL

[Tailgunner Joe]

Working in the shadow of some of Scotland's highest mountain peaks, conservationists are ripping out thousands of trees — planted mostly as a tax break for wealthy investors — to preserve the habitat of some of the world's rarest birds.

The European Union has partly funded a $4.3 million program to restore the Forsinard Nature Reserve in the Scottish Highlands to a massive bog.

"We've started on a major operation that will return the peatlands to their former condition. The bogs are of massive international importance and are among the most uniquely significant habitats in Britain," said Norrie Russell, manager of the reserve.

Forsinard, sometimes called Scotland's rainforest, is home to nesting birds such as the black-throated diver, common scoter, greenshank and hen harrier. The birds share the peatlands with millions of insect-eating sundew plants, dragonflies, water beetles and red deer. Similar conditions are rare elsewhere in the world, occurring only in isolated spots such as Tierra del Fuego and the South Island of New Zealand.

Forsinard is a hybrid Norse-Gaelic name meaning "high water," and at 98 percent water and 2 percent peat moss the area was long considered of little good but for forestation.

Conifers were planted in the late 1970s and a subsequent tax concession introduced by the government of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s led to huge investment in forestation of the area.

The aim of Thatcher's policy was to boost the forestry industry in the Highlands and create jobs. The popularity of the plan was enhanced by the involvement of celebrities such as singers Cliff Richard and Phil Collins.

But as the wealthy harvested tax breaks, the trees were slowly strangling the natural habitat.

The trees began drying out the bog, diverting water flow. Falling pine needles increased levels of acidity in the numerous lochs, devastating the flora and fauna on which many other species depended.

Conservationists are now working to turn back the clock.

"By felling the timber and creating pools of water we can halve the accelerating damage to the bogs caused by the trees drawing water for the peatlands," Russell said.

"But it is going to take a long time. The damage that was done in the space of the past 30 years could easily take another 3,000 to fully correct."

The European Union-funded program is being led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and also involves partial funding from the Forestry Commission, Forest Enterprise, Scottish Natural Heritage and Plantlife.

The first stage of the three-year project will clear 750 acres of plantation by April and use the discarded timber to block up the ditches that were dug to drain the peatlands 20 years ago.

Established as a reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1995, Forsinard gets about 5,000 visitors a year. A nature trail, the Dubh Lochan Trail, has been laid out to allow visitors access without disturbing ground-nesting birds.

[henderson field]

....and, Mr. Stavka, where do do think that sprawl comes from? Displacement of people already here, say, from Akron, Ohio, to Denver? Or could it possibly be coming from radical population growth of which the central element is immigration? Don't like sprawl? Write your congressman, Mr. Stavka, to stop immigration.

[185JHP]

You've got a way with words, yd. Do you realize how well your words apply to (1) disruptor threadpests and (2) the denizens of a particular political party?

[Torie]

Urban Sprawl is such a myth

Come visit California sometime, and check out Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and adjacent portions of San Bernadino and Riverside counties and get back to me.

[hedgetrimmer]

I think you are talking about growth due to unlimited immigration, not urban sprawl because of the areas you cite.

Let people live how they like. If they want to live in a single family house on a little piece of property, let them build it. Don't force them into high rise concentration camps because you want to "contain growth".

Think about why there has been so much growth in California in the first place. It is due to immigration and illegal immigration. Think about why the government, your government my government has an open border policy allowing the flood of people into the country and state.

[Torie]

Blaming the spawl on Hispanics is really quite silly. But yes, it was inevitable that the spawl would take place, and the land does not have natural green belts to be preserved. Having said that, in some places, there are micro green belts which are quite effective. I live in one of those zones.

[Stavka2]

Oh, so it must be all those illegal Mexicans who are finally moving out of their 10 to a room apartments and buying the 150K+ homes with 1 acre lots and shopping at all the huge strip malls....yes, it's all those damned illegals with their cash.

[Stavka2]

Urban sprawl is a myth? So is your reality. I invite you to go to NC and drive up on I85/I40 from Charlotte to Raleigh and tell me how much of a myth it is. But while you're at it, you can sit in 2 hour traffic in Charlotte and 1.5 hour traffic in RTP/Raleigh. Yes, it's all a myth how long everyone gets to sit around and breath foul air...some of the worst in the country now.

[Stavka2]

Yes their planning was horrible but the lack of planning in place like NC is so much better...I personally love to see 100 acres stripped of all follage till it's red clay so a hundred houses with a few bushes are put in....why, hell, who needs those damned trees anyways. I also enjoy buying a new house where all the top soil is stripped off so that you can go and buy cubic meters of earth to put it back on or sit in a red clay paradise, where nothing grows....so much better then any kind of planning. And the road congestion and inadequet schools and infrastructure, like phones that have been out for 2 weeks now since the last ice storm, are also a joy. And that's the good sections of town.

[2sheep]

>Conservationists are now working to turn back the clock.

Turning back the clock to the Dark Ages.  Conservationists of this ilk are one more cog in the wheel of the culture of death and forced population control.  Likely they will want malaria in the swamps and to station poor people nearby in honor of Thomas Robert Mathus (1766-1834).  Mother Earth and Gaii worship are satanic and an intermediate step to population control.

[Stavka2]

So what you are saying is that 5 million dirt poor mexicans over the last 10 years are to blame for all the suburbanmania...yup, sounds about right...their only blame is in helping to build it. Your arguement is silly, 5 million Mexicans spread out over the entire nation couldn't account for even a bit of the sprawl that covers more and more good farm land.

[Stavka2]

By the way, God gave us the earth to be it's care takers, not it's rapists. I don't believe in doing absolutely nothing, but let me tell you a little story about Eastern North Carolina. You see, there are a lot of unsupervized hog farms owned by various strong lobbiests. The waste is collected in ponds where it sits and rots and seeps into the aquifires. True, Greens scream all the time, but on the case of subsea level manure ponds, they were right. They said: wait till a flood and see what happens....but why control or manage, let everyone do what they want....so along comes Hurricane Floyd...and guess what, 3 meters of water in the eastern lowlands, which is about a third of the state. So all the crap, quite litterly, gets washed out and into everyones well water, so that now no one can drink the water...and everything is polluted...so much better now. Screw any kind of planning.

[2sheep]

>You see, there are a lot of unsupervized hog farms owned by various strong lobbiests.

More government control is NOT the answer.  More government control and love of the nanny state got you Homeland Security.  If you're happy and you know it, clank your chains.  The NWO agenda favors rich anglophiles who break all the rules to make themselves richer and at the same time bespoil the earth.  Gaii worship is Luciferian occultism and it means to kill people in massive numbers.

 Gaia: The re-ordering of the world - Part 1
 Sustainable development explained: Joan Veon explains evolution of U.N. global control push - Part 2
 Churches deceived by green extremists: Henry Lamb describes world religion called 'Gaia'
 Sustainable development explained: Joan Veon explains evolution of U.N. global control push
 'Overpopulation' Turns Out to Be Overhyped
 Beyond Birth Control: Dr. Stanley K. Monteith ~The Population Control Agenda
 The Georgia Guidestones: New Age Reason, or Age Old Treason?
 22  - quote on World Health Org and AIDS in Africa
 UN MANUAL PROMOTES ABORTION, STERILIZATION ON REFUGEE POPULATIONS
 Tetrahedron: U.N._World_Food_and_Population.html
 POPULATION CONTROL, THE FINAL SOLUTION (1 of 3)
 POPULATION CONTROL, THE FINAL SOLUTION (2 of 3) - See post #8 by Romulus re Julian Simon
 POPULATION CONTROL, THE FINAL SOLUTION (3 of 3)
 Global Governance: Excessive Population
 Peter Singer and Eugenics
 The Re-education of America
 Population Control and Eugenics: the Dark Underworld of Modernity
 Are you being targeted for Euthanasia?

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[The_Victor]

They are doing something useful with it. Why is it that being conservative seems to mean always exploiting the environment. I'm no green but Christ, looking at US sprawling unplanned development, clear cutting and ripping the very dirt upto the clay looks like crap. The pollution and massive traffic are just so fun to live with, as are the absolute lack of good parks in many cities to take your kids too. And the one line of trees on either side of a creek, over run with construction run off, is not preserving nature. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to live in a McWorld of run down strip malls and super highways everywhere you look.

Clogging a ditch can be achieved with any number of less valuable materials. Wood is a wonderfully useful product that is a renewable resource. Build something that can only be made of wood, and fill the ditches with dirt. Sheesh.

[The_Victor]

Woodlands or bog, makes no difference to me, both are useful by nature. If they are going to cut down the trees that were planted twenty to thirty years ago, at least use them for something other than filling in the drainage ditches.

[The_Victor]

More government control is NOT the answer.

The worst environmental devistation on earth is found in the communist dicatatorships of the world. Romania (coal pollution), East Germany (NAZI era synthetic rubber mfg), USSR (remember Chernobyl), just to name a few. It took freedom to allow these places to even start cleaning up these messes created by their respective governments.

[Stavka2]

Yup, absolutely no safety regulations in NC, so while you're at it, please go to the farmers and other residents and explain to them how much better off they are now without any regulation on the hog industry...now that their ground water is polluted, the fish are dead and their homes are full of pig manure...be my guest.

Government's job is not to control the economy/market it is to regulate it to keep one side from abusing the other and an even playing field.

[Stavka2]

Just out of morbid curiosity: what do you think of state/federal parks, should be clear cut them and make a profit...after all, what purpose do they serve, just sitting around like that, right?.

[hedgetrimmer]

California's population grew by 10 million over the last 10 years. It is estimated that the illegal population is 11 to 18 million around the country.

When a huge population of illegals moves into an area,say East LA or Compton or one of those places, where to the people go who used to live there? Do they just vaporize off the earth, or do they find new housing in the area if they are to keep their jobs in the area? And if there is no exisitng housing in the area, do you think they build? They don't just leave a leave a bunch of empty houses and build new ones on the outskirts of the city, the existing houses get lived in too.

In my area much of the increase in density and incursion into farmland was because the government sponsored housing developments for MEXICAN FARMWORKERS ONLY. So though you consider them dirt poor, they are not, considering they have the full force of the state and federal government to support them. If you drive up highway one in Santa Cruz county you will find low income apartment complexes BUILT IN THE MIDDLE of strawberry FARMLAND, BY THE GOVERNMENT to house these people. You will find that schools are being build, IN THE MIDDLE OF FARMLAND outside of city limits, because it is another way for the CITY TO EXPAND ITS BASE. There is are 3 new schools, in north Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz county that are BUILT IN FARMFIELDS where there are no houses close by and kids cannot walk to the schools because they are out in the middle of someone's farm. FORCED there against the voters will, by the local GOVERNMENTS to support the immigrant growth rate. Is that considered sprawl, in your eyes?

You would think it illegal for the government to restrict who gets to live in government owned low income housing, but they do it. The government discrimates based on race and profession, and they get away with it. In fact. The huge amount of growth in Watsonville Ca. WHICH HAS A VERY LARGE ILLEGAL POPULATION, is due COMPLETELY to IMMIGRATION. The city will only issue building permits for low income apartment house complexes, and they are ANNEXING FARMLAND to do it.

[Stavka2]

Sorry, don't buy that nation wide. This might be a local phenomenun but it is not nation wide. To account for the urban sprawl of the East Coast, half of Mexico would have to move here. Further more, Urban Sprawl started off in the 1950's not the 1990's. Next, there are huge apartment complexes being built regardless of the fact that they can't seem to rent even half of them, yet the momentum keeps chugging right along with more and more unneeded and uneconomic development. Many neighborhoods the builders build houses before they get buyers and some of those houses stand around empty for years, but still they build more and always, always through strip cutting. And none of this explains the gigantic ecological disaster of eastern North Carolina that still lingers on two years after it happened.