HebrideanUltraTerfHecate on Nostr: ...
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/town-battles-forestry-firms-threatening-to-change-the-landscape-kb5f2cbsr
Residents of the picturesque town of Langholm believe they are living through a real-life reboot of the Scottish screen classic Local Hero, but this time the cash cow threatening their small town is trees rather than oil. Land on the adjacent Warb Law hill has been sold to big forestry firms for the planting of sitka spruce, a fast-growing conifer grown for timber and popular with investors. Locals fear their new neighbours are more interested in the lucrative grants and tax breaks that follow forestry developments than creating a sustainable landscape.
“I don’t think big New York investors care one bit about our town,” says Margaret Pool, who runs the town tourism centre. “If they are told they can make money from planting sitka spruce they’ll plant sitka spruce. They couldn’t care less about us.”
The farming community is described by locals as “the fabric of life in the town” but that fabric is beginning to unravel. Most of the land around Langholm was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, one of Scotland’s biggest landowners, but it is now being sold off and the farms are disappearing one by one. Pool, the former chairman of the Langholm Initiative to regenerate the town, said: “We’ve lost about 20 farms in the Langholm area. We are sacrificing food production to plant trees.
https://archive.ph/mZ8PJ
Residents of the picturesque town of Langholm believe they are living through a real-life reboot of the Scottish screen classic Local Hero, but this time the cash cow threatening their small town is trees rather than oil. Land on the adjacent Warb Law hill has been sold to big forestry firms for the planting of sitka spruce, a fast-growing conifer grown for timber and popular with investors. Locals fear their new neighbours are more interested in the lucrative grants and tax breaks that follow forestry developments than creating a sustainable landscape.
“I don’t think big New York investors care one bit about our town,” says Margaret Pool, who runs the town tourism centre. “If they are told they can make money from planting sitka spruce they’ll plant sitka spruce. They couldn’t care less about us.”
The farming community is described by locals as “the fabric of life in the town” but that fabric is beginning to unravel. Most of the land around Langholm was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, one of Scotland’s biggest landowners, but it is now being sold off and the farms are disappearing one by one. Pool, the former chairman of the Langholm Initiative to regenerate the town, said: “We’ve lost about 20 farms in the Langholm area. We are sacrificing food production to plant trees.
https://archive.ph/mZ8PJ