Let's scotch the myth

<p>In Greek mythology, Cassandra was provided with the gift of prophesy, but a curse was placed on her, ensuring that nobody would believe her warnings. <br /> Cassandra was left with the knowledge of future events, but despite order, reason, truth and clarity, she could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.  <br /> The moral nature of certain predictions meant disbelief, when she attempted to share her deep concerns with others, tending to evoke a refusal to believe what at the same time others knew to be true, and express the universal tendency toward denial. Envisioning such a truth, for some, especially authority figures, they just would not accept.<br /> This week the whole Blackface flock was sold off a substantial hill farm near Oban; in yet another dispersal with no protection for the hefted flock ever to return to the hill…people, flora, fauna, birds all gone. No people living and working the farm or maintaining those unique hill farm gardens either (no allotments these). <br /> This week too I witnessed the wake of devastation of abandoned hills round Loch Katrine and Glendevon, the thistles higher than me, ragwort, bracken and weeds adrift, bereft of wildlife, the hills silent…only turbines jarring the landscape. <br /> Millions to The Woodland Trust to destroy Glenfinlas, Loch Katrine and Glendevon; people, animals, heritage, culture, the hills empty, Scotland’s unique rural way of life gone.<br /> And so it has come full circle in a quarter of a century of appealing through The Scottish Farmer in the uphill struggle to the uphill solution for policy and funding directly to retain, restock and sustain local families living and working in the shepherded hills; to retain and restore the hefts and the herds; the hill bound hefted sheep and deer and the rich legacy of wildlife… only possible to be maintained by traditional hillfarming long term tenancies, for shepherds, keepers, foresters and their families – not as contractors; not out to tender to remote control from afar – but, local, long term leases secure to re-instate rural communities for real.<br /> It’s not about a last-minute place at The Woodland Expansion Advisory Group<br /> Mr Lochhead, it’s time for 20 places representing shepherding and proper land use on the Hill Farms Revival Group. <br /> Where is cross-compliance in the forest? Jim Walker had a point about tagging the cucumbers….Forestry Commission no longer complies with any regulatory body, far less the habitat directive, and SEPA must be silent. What a paradox that forestry was favoured for jobs and the deep ploughing caterpillar tractors for deep peat! In Galloway, FC has just demolished Shiel of Castlemaddy; nor are there any new jobs and no agri-forestry holdings. No EID of tree stock, no GAEC on thousands of acres under Forestry Commission tenure, boarded up farmhouses, derelict farm steadings, dykes in disrepair, wildlife shot…..the never ending saga remains unheard; and unreported under the Official Secrets Act.<br /> We don’t need to clamour to sit under any forestry table scrabbling for monopoly money from the carbon rich crumbs of sawdust from dead wood weavil reserves, or shelter sought in the theatre of walls of roots of wind blow, before drowning in the dolloped deep peat ditches dividing the clearfell, in jobless homeless landless lifeless homecoming to Scotland.<br />  Do we need an advisory group? Do we need more research? What we need is re-instatement of the traditional hill farm tenancies.  Look at Old Maps to witness that the old hawthorns and hardwoods in the glens today co-existed with hill agriculture, needing the grazing of deer and sheep for hundreds of years. <br /> A moratorium ion all tree planting is vital until a land use strategy focuses on the resurgence of shepherded hills..  </p> <p><br /> <strong>MV Armstrong  </strong><br /> Clachan of Penninghame <br /> By Baltersan <br /> Newton Stewart </p>