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700178

17 Bayhead St

Stornoway, Lewis

 

 

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Lack of parliamentary representation               610/11

 

Sirs,

I am writing to support what Cllr Donald Manford has said about SNH’s handling of the SAC designations in the Sound of Barra.  If nothing else, the e-mail exchange between SNH and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee shows that SNH are very much in the driving seat in Scotland.  

SNH are very plausible when they say that the UK was asked by the EU to find more "sites" for common seals - until you learn that since that call went out in 2004, the only site in the whole of the UK being put forward is the Sound of Barra.

It is the same for sandbanks and reefs – all very plausible until you learn that the only inshore sites being looked at in Scotland for these habitats are the Sound of Barra and East Mingulay, the others being offshore sites.

That was certainly the position as explained to us in April 2010 by an official of Marine Scotland.  If that situation has changed, SNH can inform us now.

Pressure has been brought to bear on the Scottish Government to designate the Sound of Barra because SNH made a serious error in Sept 2000 when it notified the first pSAC in the Sound for common seals.

Common seal numbers in northern parts of the Western Isles have increased since 1992 but numbers on the original Sound of Barra site slumped to 26 at the last count (2008).  So SNH had a problem: by its own admission, it couldn't denotify the site because there is no mechanism for doing so.  But it was potentially going to be left with an SAC for common seals with no seals on it.  

It is for that reason that SNH went out to "add value" to this flop of a site by saying to the JNCC, in the e-mail quoted by Donald Manford, that it would make a suitable site to plug one of the UK reefs gap.  Presumably it did something similar on behalf of sandbanks, which in its 2000 notification for the Sound of Barra, SNH had considered "insignificant."   And finally SNH has hugely enlarged the original Sound of Barra pSAC site so that it now contains 116 common seals (2011 count).

What needs to be explained is why SNH can be permitted to redraw boundaries, add reefs as a qualifying protected habitat and completely alter its view on sandbank habitats on a site in this way, in order to justify its selection and to cover up their own incompetence.

This letter merely touches upon a few SNH actions.  We have long felt that these merit a thorough investigation.   Donald Manford has not shirked in his duty as our local councillor to demand one.  It is to be hoped that our parliamentary representatives will see the justice in adding their voices to his.

Angus MacLeod

Chairman for SHAMED

Eoligarry

Isle of Barra

 

 

 

 

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