Highland Council has been accused of “flying in the face” of expert opinion by claiming too much land has been designated as “wild” on a map designed to control the spread of windfarms.
The local authority’s stance is also unpopular with anti-turbine campaigners, who welcome the designation of large areas of wild land.
The council claims the Core Areas of Wild Land identified on the map produced by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) are too large because they include less wild land neighbouring the higher-value areas. But a conservation charity says the areas earmarked on the SNH map broadly coincide with the advice they have received from world experts on wilderness.
A spokesman for the John Muir Trust said wild land was “a continuum” – a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements were not perceptibly different from each other, but the extremes were quite distinct.
He said: “This map is the product of more than a decade of work by experts, who have examined the landscape of Scotland using a whole array of criteria. The process has been extremely thorough and rigorous and corresponds very closely with the expert analysis that we have commissioned in the past from the world’s leading experts on wild land at the Wildland Research Institute at the University of Leeds.
“By criticising the core areas of wild land in this way, Highland Council is flying in the face of expert analysis.”
He added the heart of the Cairngorm plateau and the high peaks of the Cuillins in Skye were at one end of the sequence, and that every area of land included in the core areas was not going to correspond with this “extremely high standard of wild land”.
Anti-windfarm campaigner Denise Davis said she would prefer to see no turbines, but understood government policy meant they had to go somewhere.
She said: “I totally agree with SNH that wild land should be protected and that the protection should be extended to less wild areas. And I disagree with Highland Council because people need to be protected just as much.”
The local authority’s response to the map will be discussed at Highland Council’s planning committee meeting on Wednesday.
Committee chairman, Councillor Thomas Prag, said: “We believe that, if we stretch these core areas of wild land too far, we begin to get into some areas that are not truly wild, where this designation would be overly restrictive.”
He stressed that the designation would not only affect proposed windfarms.
SNH landscape manager Simon Brooks said: “The seven-week consultation closed on December 20.
“We received around 300 responses from a range of interested parties, including local authorities, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) representing environmental and development interests, commun-ities and individuals.”