Sir, – The scepticism being expressed in The SF about the wisdom of converting so much of Scotland’s uplands to coniferous plantations is welcome and long overdue.

This is particularly acute in the Southern Uplands, already the most forested part of the country and one where afforestation is proceeding at a rate of knots and where 80% of the applications for grant in recent years have been for conifers, mainly sitka spruce. It has been described as a ‘Highland Clearance’ but its more of a Southern clearance.

There is a place for commercial forestry crops, both economically and as a contribution to climate change amelioration, but just as we used to talk about ‘the balance of nature’ there needs to be balance in public policy.

Allowing the current imbalance in southern Scotland between open ground, native woodland and plantation crops to increase risks seriously impacting on the Scottish Government’s other stated priority of addressing biodiversity loss.

I estimate conservatively that the ordinary, although diverse hill land of our farm, has around 50 plant species. These are common grasses, forbs, ferns and mosses – nothing unusual. It has the associated insect population, as well as skylarks, meadow pipits, snipe, stonechat, pied wagtails, wheatears etc. Unfortunately lapwings and curlews are now more of a rarity, but that’s another story.

Replace that with a coniferous plantation and you’ll be lucky to find 10 plant species and these will be mostly at the margins. Of course, allowed to mature and properly managed, some coniferous plantations would develop into attractive and more diverse forest but that is not the plan. It is to get them to suck up as much carbon as possible for 30 years and then harvest and replant the crop.

Apart from the impact on biodiversity, the soil impact long-term will be to convert the brown earths of drier grassland into nutrient-depleted podsolised soils – a degradation of the natural capital we are trying to conserve.

Joan Mitchell, Bagbie Farm, Newton Stewart.