Protect Scotland's Natural Beauty: Prevent Windfarm Building on the Isle of Lewis

Although the creation of new renewable energy sources can be a great way to help out the environment, it can also be severely detrimental if the required equipment is built in a wild, pristine area.  Unfortunately, in November of 2004, Lewis Wind Power Limited submitted a proposal to the Scottish Executive for the construction of 234 wind turbines across the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides, one of Scotland's most naturally beautiful and unique areas.  Home to several species of birds, small mammals, and freely-roaming livestock, Lewis's wild moors are a treasure to both residents and tourists alike. 

The building of this particular windfarm, according to Lewis Wind's website www.lewiswind.com, is intended to create jobs and supply many people with electricity created by wind power.  However, tourism is also important to Lewis's economy--worth millions of pounds each year, in fact--and if the remote landscape of this ancient isle is disrupted by 455-foot-high wind turbines, it is very likely that tourism rates in this area could drop significantly.

Formed in the Precambrian era about 3 billion years ago, Lewis is a place of fascinating geological diversity, composed of some of the oldest rocks in the world.  The magnificent Calanais Standing Stones, over 3,000 years old, grace the western coast, as do the historically important Gearrannan and Arnol Blackhouses, where people lived off of the land as late as the 1970s.  The ruins of ancient homesteads, some even with Norse or Irish characteristics, testify to the isle's natural charisma throughout the ages, despite its distance from urban trade centers and its often icy winters.  Any visit to this isle can remove one completely from the agitations of the modern, overdeveloped world--that is, as long as its landscape stays free of wind turbines.  Along with ruining the skyline, whose only interruptions to date are occasional power poles, the building of the turbines would additionally increase bird deaths, disrupt the geology of the area, require the building of more roads, and interfere with large areas of farmland used by local residents to sustain themselves.  Furthermore, if the project is scaled down to less than 200 turbines, which has been suggested by planners, the windfarm would provide less than .6 percent of the U.K.'s renewable energy by 2010.  Lewis Wind Power even claims, through their website, that the farm would only be used for 25 years--a lifespan hardly worth destroying the moors forever for, even if the visible turbines themselves were deconstructed afterward, as the site claims would happen.

Various civilisations have inhabited Lewis since as early as 3,000 B.C., and its citizens throughout the ages have taken exceptional care to keep the area as beautiful as possible.  Now, as Lewis is threatened with an unavoidably visible monument to the world's declining resources--or, rather, 234 monuments--it is indescribably urgent to continue the isle's tradition of environmental protection.  The official public comment period has passed, but permission has yet to be granted for the turbines' construction.  Other windfarms are currently being planned as well, such as a 133-turbine windfarm known as Eisgein by Beinn Mhor Power, and a 125-turbine farm in Pairc by Scottish and Southern Energy.  These need to be opposed as well.

Please help save this natural Scottish treasure.  Sign this petition, and make a statement against the building of windfarms across Lewis, one of the Hebrides' most beautiful isles.  Objections to the Eisgein plan in particular can also be sent separately to Paul Smith, The Scottish Executive, Consents and Emergency Planning Unit, 2nd Floor, Meridian Court, 5 Cadogan Street, Glasgow, G2 6AT, UK; email: paul.smith@scotland.gsi.gov.uk.