The Scottish Government has slashed spending on the environment, again (it always seems that when money is tight the environment suffers first).
This time it is the very important Nature Restoration Fund that has gone. This fund, worth £29.2m, is used by councils and environment agency NatureScot to help local projects to combat the crisis in nature, from tree planting to restoring waterways.
But the Scottish Government has redirected £5m to fund public sector pay offers. They say the money will be returned to fund nature restoration, one day. But it is not a good look for a country already struggling to combat climate change and loss of nature – whether that be reaching targets or giving the environment a greater priority.
It does seem that the only way we in Scotland can protect the environment properly is by doing it ourselves.
I have written before about how myself and a friend are trying to protect an area of great biodiversity very close to my home in Linlithgow. And, how I have realised I am now a (very peaceful) eco-warrior read more here.
The area we are trying to save from housebuilding is 14.3 hectares in size and ranges from a river bank, a lagoon, marsh and heath land, and lots of woodland.
Why are we doing this? Well, to cut a long story short it was once a sand quarry and the owners used grants (funded by public money) to plant loads of trees and do some quite successful rewilding (before that was a popular word).
Then, when the time limit on conditions for the grants was up, they put it up for sale to housebuilders. That is where we come in – we don’t want the land to be built on, we want it left as it is. That means as a thriving haven for nature which is enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.
If successful that means we will have helped preserve nature for the future following a period of nature restoration.
But here we also have the problem of Government and priorities. The local council assigned the land as not for housing but when the owners appealed the “experts” at the Scottish Government decreed housebuilding was ok. That sounds like the priority was not nature. Cutting the Nature Restoration Fund is just a continuation of this approach. And the publicly funded grants which helped a sand quarry be restored to nature are also tainted with the same attitude; an initial priority on nature but not long-lasting.
So, we are doing it ourselves, pushing to get wildlife surveys done so we can get some kind of designation such as a Local Nature Reserve – not a priority for the Scottish Government.
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