Rob Edwards

MSPs put pressure on ministers to cut climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 30 November 2014

Scottish ministers are coming under urgent pressure from an SNP-led committee of MSPs to end their repeated failure to meet climate targets by making major cuts in pollution from farming, housing and transport. 

Farmers need to reduce their use of polluting chemical fertilisers, householders should be helped to better insulate old and leaky homes and motorists persuaded to opt for cleaner electric and hybrid cars, MSPs say.

In a sharply worded submission this weekend, the Scottish Parliament’s environment committee is urging ministers to ensure that their climate reforms “are not just words”. Scotland must not abandon, or water down, its world-leading ambitions to combat climate change, the committee says. 

The Scottish government has so far missed every statutory annual target to reduce carbon emissions in 2010, 2011 and 2012. This is a “disappointment”, the committee says, and leaves ministers facing “significant difficulties” in meeting future targets.

Ministers have suggested lowering the climate targets to make meeting them easier. But this has been roundly rejected by MSPs on the committee as it “would send the wrong global message”.

Leaked plan to get rid of pine martens ‘deeply flawed’

from Sunday Herald, 30 November 2014

A leaked plan by the game-shooting lobby to remove pine martens from woodlands around Aviemore in the Highlands has sparked fierce opposition from wildlife groups.

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), a charity funded by landowners, farmers and sporting interests, wants to launch a trial next year to trap and relocate the iconic furry mammals, which are protected under law as an endangered species. 

But the plan has been condemned as “deeply flawed” by experts, who fear it could open the door to the widespread killing of pine martens. It has also been rejected by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which owns two of the woodlands where the trial had been proposed.

A six-page internal document drawn up by GWCT scientists - and seen by the Sunday Herald - discloses a plan to get rid of 120 pine martens over six years from four Strathspey forests. It promises to release any females caught in traps “on welfare grounds” if they are suckling young. 

Three of the forests – Rothiemurchus, Glenmore and Inshriach are owned by the Forestry Commission and one - Kinveachy - by the 13th Earl of Seafield. GWCT had to abandon plans to use two other woodlands - Abernethy and Craigmore – because of opposition from their owner, RSPB.

“Whilst humane killing of captured martens may be the easiest option, we intend to make martens available for wider marten conservation programs,” the leaked document says. “These may include reintroduction programs to England and Wales.”

House of Lords fails to block plan for fracking under homes without consent

from The National, 27 November 2014

The entire House of Lords has been accused of missing the chance to block the UK government’s plan to allow companies to frack for gas under people’s homes without their consent.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has pointed out that an objection from a single peer in the House of Lords could have stymied the government amendment removing the right of property owners to object to drilling under their land. The SNP does not sit in the Lords on principle. 

According to the standing orders of the House of Lords Grand Committee, a single voice against an amendment results in its rejection. But when the committee considered the fracking proposal on 14 October it went through without objection.

If it becomes law, the proposal would let companies prospecting for underground gas or oil to drill 300 metres or more below properties across the UK without requiring the owners’ permission. The Grangemouth multinational, Ineos, announced last week that it was investing up to £640 million in fracking for shale gas, and has a licence to explore 742 square miles of central Scotland. 

Fracking is a way of fracturing rocks deep underground by injecting high-pressure liquids into them so that trapped shale gas can escape. There are also highly controversial plans to exploit other forms of underground gas, including coalbed methane in Falkirk and coal gasification under the Firth of Forth.

Outrage over the display of 2,000 dead moles in the Lammermuir Hills

from The National, 26 November 2014

A display of 2,000 dead moles near a grouse moor in the Lammermuir Hills in East Lothian has been condemned as “disgustingly Victorian”. 

The animals’ bodies have been strung up in a long line on a fence through fields south east of Haddington. They were photographed and counted on Sunday (23 November) by a birdwatcher, Geoff Morgan, and posted on Twitter. 

Landowners, gamekeepers and farmers regard moles as pests and regularly cull them, but the scale and manner of this mass killing has shocked animal welfare groups. 

“Queen Victoria must be alive and well,” said John Robins from Animal Concern. “This unnecessary massacre of native wildlife shows the outdated mentality of some people working our land today.”

He pointed out that hanging out corpses on a line went back to the days when gamekeepers and shepherds had to prove that they were doing their job so they would get paid. “If these moles have been poisoned their carcasses could in turn poison birds such as buzzards, harriers and hawks,” Robins suggested.

Revealed: Westminster’s £37 million US deal for Trident missile launchers

from Sunday Herald, 23 November 2014 

Westminster has agreed a £37 million deal with the US government for a dozen huge new Trident missile launchers more than a year before the UK parliament is due to decide whether the nuclear weapons system should be renewed.

The US defence giant, General Dynamics, has been contracted by the US Navy to make 12 launch tubes for a UK submarine that could start to replace those currently on the Clyde next decade. According to the US Navy, the company will end up making a total of 48 missile tubes for four new UK nuclear submarines.

But the UK parliament is not scheduled to take the main decision on whether or not Trident nuclear weapons should be renewed, or how many submarines there should be, until 2016 after next year’s general election. This has angered leading Nationalist and Labour politicians, who accuse the UK government of preempting a democratic decision.

The deal to equip UK submarines with 12 missile launch tubes each is also at odds with the UK government’s oft-repeated disarmament promise that it would only use eight. Critics fear that future governments could load the four additional tubes with missiles and hugely expand the UK’s nuclear firepower. The UK government is also facing allegations that it misled the public and the United Nations (UN) over the number of tubes, though this is denied.

Plan for new radioactive waste plant at Faslane

from Sunday Herald, 23 November 2014

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has applied for planning permission for a major new radioactive waste treatment plant at the nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde.

It has told Argyll and Bute Council that the new facility is to treat and dispose of solid and liquid radioactive waste from the reactors that drive submarines. Some of the waste will be discharged into the Gareloch, northwest of Helensburgh.

The new plant will be housed in a two-storey building 45 metres long and 31 metres wide, and is designed to last for 50 years. If planning permission is given, construction is expected to begin in January 2016 and finish in April 2018.

“The existing effluent treatment and disposal process is effective but nearing the end of its life and it requires to be replaced with a facility which will utilise modern technology and will reduce the levels of radioactivity in the effluent discharges into the Gareloch,” the planning application says.

Call for ban on fracking and underground coal gas development

from Sunday Herald, 16 November 2014

A new coalition of 26 community and environmental groups is today urging the Scottish government to ban fracking for shale gas and drilling for underground coal gas.

The groups, led by Concerned Communities of Falkirk (CCoF) and Friends of the Earth Scotland, are demanding “a moratorium on all forms of unconventional gas development in Scotland”. Risks to public health, workers and the environment are “impossible to regulate away”, they say. 

They also want Scottish ministers to refuse permission for controversial plans to drill 22 wells to extract coalbed methane in Falkirk and Stirling. The plans provoked over 2,500 objections and were the subject of a public inquiry in March and April.

The groups have jointly written an open letter to the Scottish government, published in the Sunday Herald today. They include residents’ organisations from Cumbernauld, Canonbie, Clackmannanshire, Edinburgh, the Highlands and elsewhere concerned about possible developments in their areas.

Other signatories are the trade union, Unison, the Women’s Environmental Network Scotland and the Scottish Hazards Campaign. Two environmental health professors from Stirling University, Andrew Watterson and Rory O’Neill, have also added their names.

Revealed: the big name brands that have polluted Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 16 November 2014

Some of Scotland’s best-known brands have been named and shamed by the government’s green watchdog for their “poor” performances on pollution, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has fingered the famous food company, Baxters, the beer giant, Tennent Caledonian, and the biscuit-maker, McVities, for breaching pollution limits. Some leading whisky distilleries, including Glenlivet, Macallan and Ardmore, have also come under fire for failing to control their contaminating effluents.

Other major operators officially condemned as poor are the Peel Group’s Clydeport at Hunterston in North Ayrshire, which twice showered a local community with dust; the Wood Group’s oil terminal at Nigg on the Cromarty Firth, which unleashed an “offensive odour”; and Borders General Hospital in Melrose, which twice breached air pollution limits.

A big plant making wood products at Cowie in Stirling, run by the $1 billion Canadian corporation, Norbord, was slated as “very poor” by Sepa because of pollution breaches. The same plant was assessed as poor in 2012 and 2010. 

Sepa’s latest “compliance assessments” rate the environmental performance of 349 industrial sites across Scotland in 2013 as either poor or very poor. The biggest offenders were 83 water suppliers, 82 waste industry sites and 45 fish farms.

There were also 32 private sewers, 29 public sewerage works, 10 distilleries and breweries, nine crematoria, six food plants and five opencast coal mines assessed as poor (see table below). Details of most of the polluters have been posted online by Sepa, but it has kept water suppliers and sites handing radioactive substances secret “for reasons of national security”.

Environmental watchdog urged not to keep 87 polluters secret

from Sunday Herald, 16 November 2014

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has come under fire for keeping the locations of 87 polluters secret, enabling mistakes to be covered up.

In its latest assessment of environmental performances for 2013, it has refused to identify 1,187 water suppliers and 287 sites handling radioactive materials "for reasons of national security". But it has rated 83 of the water suppliers and four of the radioactive sites as “poor” or “very poor”.

Scottish Water said that it runs 224 of the water sites, 41 of which had been assessed as poor, but the locations are unknown. Others will include farmers, fish farmers, golf courses and companies that need to extract water for their businesses.

The sites handling radioactive substances will include hospitals, factories and industries using radiation sources for treatment and measurements. It is not clear whether nuclear power plants, and naval bases at Faslane and Rosyth, are included.

Scotland’s deep sea wildlife under threat from foreign fishing trawlers

from Sunday Herald, 09 November 2014

The wildlife is thousands of years old, there are millions of species that have not yet been discovered and it is by far the biggest space for life on earth. But environmentalists say it is now being destroyed. 

The world’s deep ocean environment is perhaps the most important and least understood of the planet’s natural habitats. But west of Scotland it has been targeted by foreign fishing trawlers that drag heavy nets across the seabed, damaging all in their path. 

The European Commission (EC) has proposed a ban, unleashing fury from the fishing industry and meeting opposition from the Scottish and UK governments. But pressure is now mounting on ministers to back the ban, with a petition signed by nearly 15,000 people and promoted by a coalition of ten environmental groups.

Allowing the trawling of the deep sea bottom is like letting “Stonehenge be bulldozed,” they say. But this is angrily disputed by fishing leaders, who attack environmentalists as “emotive” and the EC’s proposed ban as a “knee-jerk reaction”.

The deep sea, defined as waters deeper than 200 metres, makes up 98 per cent of all the space in which life on earth can develop. It is the world’s richest source of wildlife, with an estimated one to ten million species still to be discovered.

It can also provide rich picking for fishing boats, with French and Spanish trawlers reporting annual catches of around 6,000 tonnes each, including black scabbardfish, roundnose grenadier and blue ling. Much of this is from UK and Irish waters, including the northern Atlantic around Rockall to the west of Scotland.

Row looming over poor protection for marine wildlife

from Sunday Herald, 09 November 2014

New Scottish government proposals meant to protect marine wildlife will be greeted by a barrage of criticism this week for failing to prevent the damage being done by the fishing industry.

Environmental groups are preparing to savage management arrangements planned for a new network of marine protected areas around Scotland. The measures will enable business as usual for fishing boats, they will say, and precious wildlife sites will suffer as a result.

This weekend, a survey ship is due off Wester Ross to look for evidence of the kind of valuable underwater habitats that risk losing out. It is searching for lush, purple-pink seabed forests known as maerl beds in the hope they can be mapped and protected from dredgers.

On Tuesday the Scottish government is due to launch a major consultation on how 11 marine protected areas (MPAs) around the coast should be managed. The Sunday Herald understands that it will fall far short of what environmental groups were hoping for.

“We have always said that without effective management, MPAs are simply paper parks,” said Calum Duncan, convenor of Scottish Environment Link’s marine taskforce and Scottish programme manager for the Marine Conservation Society.

Demand for ban on propellers that slice hundreds of seals to death

from Sunday Herald, 02 November 2014

New evidence that hundreds of seals have been slashed to death and beheaded by a type of propeller used in shipping and offshore industries has prompted a powerful plea for a worldwide ban.

A scientific study for the Scottish government by the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University has confirmed that seals caught in ducted propellers suffer horrific and fatal “corkscrew” gashes. Larger seals could be decapitated by the blades, it suggests.

Ducted propellers run inside a casing, which makes them more efficient at low speeds, but it is thought the animals get trapped between the propeller blades and the casing.

Angered by the slaughter, a coalition of 26 wildlife and conservation groups is now demanding a Scottish, UK and international ban on the guilty propellers. They have written to the Scottish and UK governments warning that they are breaking the law by failing to protect seals.

“This is one of the UK’s biggest marine conservation and welfare tragedies,” said Sarah Dolman, 
Northeast Atlantic programme manager for Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the group that co-ordinated the joint letter.

“This latest evidence confirms that seals are being sliced up by some kinds of ships’ propellers and possibly in much greater numbers than previously realised. Despite the worst affected populations of harbour seals heading for local extinction, we have not seen any evidence that the UK and devolved governments plan to act to stop these needless deaths.”