Last week, the government announced that it was going to allow onshore windfarms to once again gain access to the vast pots of money set aside for renewable energy. However, there was one very important restriction: only windfarms on remote islands would be eligible. In practice, we are therefore talking about the Inner and Outer Hebrides and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland.
Having come to office on the back of a campaign pledge to stop the spread of onshore windfarms, this represented something of a U-turn, but the reaction has been comparatively muted. This is slightly surprising, because in ecological terms, the islands of Scotland are pretty much about as sensitive as it’s possible to get. Back in 2006, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds published a paper outlining the areas where windfarm developments would most threaten bird populations – these were in essence areas populated by windfarm-sensitive species and/or areas occupied by species that were already threatened.
In summary terms, most of the areas of high sensitivity fell into one of two categories: mountain tops and – you guessed it – remote islands.
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