County’s protected wetlands are well ahead of the rest
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I’VE been visiting many parts of the constituency in the weeks of recess leading to our Holyrood restart in early September. We are asked by many groups to support their causes. This week I arranged with the RSPB to visit its Broubster Leans reserve and nearby Forsie Farm to see for myself how waders like greenshank, redshank, curlew, snipe and oystercatcher and overwintering migrants, such as the rare Greenland white-fronted geese, love the protected wetlands of Caithness.
Once again I saw how the county is teaching the rest of the country a thing or two. In the case of high-nature-value farming beside the River Forss, the wetlands are amongst the most important across Britain.
On being collected from the train at Scotscalder we drove to Bridge of Broubster and nearby saw a field full of lapwings. As Lloyd Austin, head of RSPB conservation policy put it, there were possibly more lapwings on one field than in the whole of Wales.
Just seeing high-quality farming for cattle, sheep and crops alongside the management of water meadows brought me a great insight into a small extension of traditional farming practices which, with expert help, attract environmental management payments from the EU-funded Scottish Rural Development Programme.
The message is simple: bird life needs continued grazing and land management. If land is abandoned or given over only to sheep the precious habitats are lost. This requires constant vigilance and partnership with local farmers to succeed.
My visit with the Mill family at Forsie Farm was a high point. The pride in quality farming and the hereditary management of hill, fields and wetlands along the river all produce a model of how many farms in less favoured areas can be sustained.
After lunch – in the excellent Tempest Café in Thurso – we went on to visit the new John Corbett memorial bird hide at St John’s Pool near Dunnet. Several thousand visitors in three months have flocked to view breeding birds close-up. Julian Smith’s landscape art is now closely matched by the potential to view any of 200 species recorded on St John’s Loch where, with RSPB input, Julian has created a major visitor attraction en route to Dunnet Head.
All this helps my work in convening the rural affairs, climate change and environment committee in Holyrood which begins in earnest with our committee "away day" next Monday. The term "away day" is a bit inaccurate because in these cost-conscious times it takes place in the parliament. I am happy to report on and build on the work in high-nature-value farming of families like that of Russell and Will Mill and enhancing the visitor experience of bird watching as shown by Julian’s new bird hide.
LAST week I was astonished to hear teaching a new Scottish studies course in our schools would amount to brainwashing young Scots’ minds.
That, according to a Labour Party source, is what the SNP plans. Readers can judge what it’s likely to do when a curriculum paper is published.
I have to say previous debates at Holyrood on the teaching of Scottish history have been torrid affairs with the same party questioning the motives of the then minority SNP Government.
I note that a letter writer this week, a Scot who has taught in England, described the curriculum where the history was English and the literature was English too. Little did he realise he was brainwashing his students or to what end.
I’m quite sure in the Far North a carefully crafted course on our history, place names and literature would help dispel some myths about the make-up and origins of Caithness folk and their mongrel history of influences from Picts, Scots, Norsemen and even Dutch to name but four.
This is all the more urgent as a major survey across Scotland last week revealed 65 per cent of those surveyed thought more should be done to promote Gaelic in Scotland and 81 per cent felt it was important Gaelic language traditions were not lost. No extensive part of Scotland lacks Gaelic names bar the Merse around the mouth of the River Tweed.
However, the study suggested understanding of Gaelic words and phrases was limited with just over one in 10 of the general public respondents claiming to have at least some knowledge of the language.
We have seen in these columns suggestions Gaelic has no place in Caithness. Pity the anonymous online commentator who fails to see the map with hundreds of Gaelic, as well as Norse, names east of the Flows.
On alighting at Scotscalder station on Monday I looked out at Olgrinmore, a suspiciously compound name in Norse and Gaelic.
The road passed by Achavariget, then around the foot of Beinn Freaceasdain and by the farm of Achnacly.
Ach being the Gaelic for field, it seems many farms along the Forss were inhabited by Gaelic speakers, alongside the Norse.
It was pointed out to me by Russell Mill at Forsie that west of the Forss water was cleared of its people while the east side was not.
No doubt these were the actions of a laird in the 19th century who would be affecting English pronunciations to tone down his native Caithness dialect of Scots and possibly removed bilingual Gaelic and Caithness dialect speakers from that part of west Caithness.
So I’m all for Scottish studies in our schools. The course, in keeping with the Curriculum for Excellence, can be tailored to meet the local conditions of each part of our multicultural and proudly mongrel nation.
www.robgibson.org
