Campaigning

 No posts for a while as I've been busy.

Back in March we finally got agreement with Perth and Kinross Council to fund our village library into the future. We're not entirely sure how long that future is, but for the moment the library looks secure, although we're still engaging with their proxy, Culture Perth and Kinross, about some development plan.

In the last month a group of us decided to try to stop the windfarm development that was proposed to plough a new road through parts of Glen Lednock and cause traffic mayhem and misery to residents of the glen and the centre of Comrie. The first phase of this battle has just ended.

As someone who sees themselves as politically Green this was a bit counter-intuitive, and looks like nimbyism, but in Scotland we are seeing the use of the financial arrangements of the Scottish Government being used to benefit shareholders and not Scottish citizens, the folk who via their taxes, and their electricity bills, pay for much of this. This particular scheme is particularly environmentally destructive in our view. And it also would also cause misery to homes and travellers all the way back to Perth and beyond. There appear to be all sorts of breaches of Scotland's National Planning Framework 4, which is designed to ensure that developments are fair to all of us. 

Here's the official map of part of the development. It is worth reading what Park's Watch have to say about it here - https://parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2025/07/21/glen-lednock-wind-farm/

 

An issue that can be dug out of the paperwork - https://www.glenlednockwindfarm.co.uk/ is that the developers themselves estimate that during the 40 year life of the turbines they would kill 12 Golden Eagles, 18 White-tailed Eagles and 112 Red Kites. If a sporting estate made that statement I think there would be a bit of a fuss!!

A long time since I posted and a birthday occurred along the way. A very welcome present was membership of the Botanical Society of the British Isles; what an excellent organisation! Here's a link to the Perthshire bit of the website https://bsbi.org/perthshire I've made a couple of visits to the nature trail at the foot of Ben Lawers, by the car park. That has produced some new plants for me. I'm eyeing the upper regions of this Munroe as there are some very special plants up there, but it's a bit of a slog. There's also a Staphylinid beetle found near the summit in 1974, the only UK record. It would be very interesting to know if that is there still. On my first visit to the nature trail I did add a new species to the Ben Lawers list:

Antherophagus similis, I'm so pleased I got hold of Vol 3 of Luff, just a shame I'm missing two volumes and they are pretty much unavailable.

That was new for me as well. A subsequent trip yesterday, somewhat marred by the midges, although they were manageable, produced two new hoverflies as well as the plants. My target plants were Alchemilla species, and with the Alchemilla BSBI guide loaded on my phone and a bit of local advice, I managed to find two of the three low altitude species.

Alchemilla alpina, very common further up the nature trail path.

Eristalis rupium, there were many of these.

Leucozona laternaria

More to come, but I'll post this just now.