January 17, 2008
Opinions, Scotland

Should a massive wind farm be built on Lewis moorland? NO

It is hard to understand how anyone would consider overwhelming the small island of Lewis with the extensive framework of a huge industrial complex driven into and across its moorland heart. Destruction is too high a price to pay for any kind of economic venture.

These deep peatland moors are precious in their own right and it would be foolhardy and shortsighted to have them irreparably mutilated in the turmoil of heavy industrial upheaval.

These are not empty, anonymous bogs of which no-one takes any notice: its moors are the very essence of what Lewis means to its people. Its light pathways and hummocky rises, along with its fine lacework of streams and inland lochs, are peppered with place names that tell of its story across the generations.

Allied to its place in the perception of its native people, the pristine Lewis moorlands are a haven for an astounding variety and quantity of natural richness, both in plant and bird life. It is no surprise that this landscape is designated as being of the highest value not merely at national but also at European level.

Multinational wind farm developers may be forgiven for not appreciating beforehand the significance of the moorland for Lewis people; otherwise they may never have unleashed their chimera of ill-found promises of riches and population stability. But the time has come to call a halt. As one schoolboy is said to have written: “How is it saving the planet to have our island churned-up so that we won’t know it?”

Finlay MacLeod
Moorland Without Turbines

The Scotsman

17 January 2008


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/01/17/should-a-massive-wind-farm-be-built-on-lewis-moorland-no/