Dear Debbie
Many thanks for your letter and for sending the attachments.
I should explain that although I have publicly criticised the decisions of SNH and FCS to approve the RSPB’s application to plant many trees in Abernethy south, and shall continue to oppose this planting and the decisions, I am not the main critic involved. I wrote to Des Thompson about this matter last August, and was surprised to learn that he had not heard of the SNH approval until I told him. He replied that he would look into this matter, and this is why I wrote to him recently asking for clarification of SNH’s role and his role within SNH on this issue.
You have sent useful information, but I still believe strongly that the RSPB should not have done this U-turn and that SNH and FCS have made a serious error of judgement in approving large-scale planting. You should of course know the obvious point that any planting is bound to change the genotype, which has evolved naturally for millennia, in unpredictable and unnatural ways. This alone, as well as other reasons, was a clear warning to avoid large-scale landscape gardening, irrespective of any human political rather than scientific new policies on pinewood expansion, and irrespective of any support for these by governments.
However, as I said earlier I am not the main person involved in criticising this case, and therefore I will not be taking up your offer of a meeting. Likewise I will not be continuing further with this correspondence and hearing any further inadequate excuses from SNH for deserting long-established policies on natural regeneration in favour of planting that has not been justified and flies in the face of the RSPB’s own findings on natural regeneration. I shall therefore forward your letter and attachments to others. I remain a scientific adviser to them.
Adam Watson
Crathes
Letters, etc. 