Scotland's vast expanses of peat bogs are regarded as our equivalent of the rainforests, and 17 per cent of the world's "blanket bog" is in this country. In all, Scottish peatlands cover some 1.9 million hectares and contain about two billion tons of carbon - roughly four times the UK's annual output - as well as "sucking in" carbon from the atmosphere. But the wild land on Lewis could be turned into an industrial landscape if the building of 176 turbines is granted approval, and other vital peatlands face the same fate. ...The Scottish Government has said it is "minded to refuse" the £500 million project but has yet to make a final decision. If it does go ahead, thousands of tonnes of peat would be excavated from the moor and huge amounts of concrete and aggregates poured into the ground to accommodate the foundations, roads and sub-stations. ..."In the headlong rush to cut carbon emissions, the EU and the UK government are throwing money into renewable energy without any coherent planning strategy to determine where wind farms should and shouldn't be built.

Britian's biggest conservation charity, the Royal Society fir the Protection of Birds, announced Wednesday (February 20) that is was about to start issuing maps of important bird-flight routes in the North of England to help planners decide the future sites of wind farms. The first map will cover Cumbria with others on Morecambe Bay and the Lancashire coast to follow. ... We could get these monsters in the Dales because we are ordered to have them by the European Union. Its bureaucrats never listen to what people say because they consider us a mere nuisance. But they do pay attention to the environmentalists. With a bit of luck, the RSPB will say that these plans would cause too much bird kill - and we Dalesfolk could be saved!

We add our support to all who believe that the government should not approve the proposed Lewis wind power development. The impact of such a development on landscape, wildlife and community interests would not be justified. We believe it is time for the Scottish Government to address some fundamental questions over Scotland's energy strategy. ...The government has time to pause before granting any more wind farm approvals, to ask whether it simply wants to carry on the policies of previous governments, or whether it wants to demonstrate a better way forward for wind energy development. New criteria, set by the government, are needed to define the type of landscape within which modern turbines can be accommodated, along with height limits. We cannot depend on simply excluding such large industrial structures from the areas designated for their wildlife and landscape value and their surrounding mountains and moorlands. A new approach is needed in which a world-class energy policy has due regard for a world-class landscape, throughout Scotland.

The Scottish Government has inflicted the biggest injury on the reputation of Scotland as a place renowned for its natural beauty. The approval of the 68-turbine Griffin wind farm in the heart of Highland Perthshire has sounded the death knell to Perthshire's worldwide reputation as a jewel in the crown of Scotland's scenery. The 68 massive turbines would be seen from every hill and mountain top in the area, including Schiehallion, pictured. ...Why did the people living here not stop this?" The answer is that the Scottish Government listened to the power companies, not the people.

The decision by the Scottish Government to deny planning approval to the giant windfarm on Lewis should be applauded. It is the first glimmer of light in the whole tortuous debate on renewable energy. The previous Labour/Lib-Lab executive had no coherent strategy for wind energy, simply offering lucrative inducements to power companies and land-owners which led to a stampede to erect giant turbines. Hundreds of applications are still in the planning pipeline, many of them in wholly inappropriate locations which would threaten endangered flora and fauna and industrialise some of Scotland's most spectacular landscape. Worse still, by destroying deep peatland, as would have been the case on Lewis, these wind-farms would create more carbon emissions than they would ever save.

On Lewis the turbines will dominate the shores of many trout lochs, yet Lewis Wind Power's environmental survey makes no mention of the environmental impact on the lochs; it makes no reference to the existence of the lochs at all. The "green lobby" often use terms like "sustainable" to describe the industrial complex that Mr McIver hopes the Barvas Moor would become once the turbines are built. Industrialisation and the current sustainable lifestyle which has protected a unique ecosystem for thousands of years are incompatible, it is impossible for them to work hand in hand ...

I was one of the community councillors who asked to go on the wind farm trip in September. I went to see if it proved my thoughts that Shetland could not absorb the visual impact of the Viking Energy project. The simple answer is that it can't - the land mass in Shetland is too small. ...We were advised at this site that the carbon footprint during the construction had been 'massive'. ...

If the 2010 target of reducing CO2 emissions was achievable, which the UK government now admits is impossible, it would have been responsible for saving a ridiculously paltry 0.0003 or four 10 thousandths of all world emissions. And the reason for this failure is plain to see - the wrong technology, that of wind power, has been used. It just cannot deliver any significant saving on emissions, not without plastering the whole country with massive turbines - a 400ft turbine is 20 times the height of a 20ft lamp-post. ...The saving of emissions, we are told, is the main reason for having these turbines in the first place. We look forward to any responses from those Welsh politicians who seem obsessed with the pursuit of this near-useless technology.

Shetland holds almost half of Britain's breeding red-throated divers. A survey of breeding red-throated divers in Shetland, carried out in 1994, found only 389 breeding pairs, a 40 per cent decline since the previous full survey in 1983. Shetland holds approximately1.5 per cent of the British breeding population of merlins, approximately 20 pairs. Consultation is on going to reduce the impact of the development especially on the breeding red-throated divers, which are considered to be particularly liable to collision with wind turbines. ...In the words of the RSPB: "The RSPB views climate change as the most serious threat to birds and their habitats, and sees renewable energy as one way to alleviate this threat. However, it would be entirely self defeating to advocate building wind farms right in the middle of our most important wildlife areas." ...Anybody that thinks developments like this are acceptable obviously don't care less about the wildlife and natural environment around them.

Remember that the threat to birds is a very small (but highly significant) part of the whole Shetland windfarm issue. If we include the negative effects on tourism, house prices, visibility, noise, quality of life, peat disturbance, run-off, environmental quality, Shetland's wilderness - as well as debatable CO2 savings, the need for 90 per cent fossil fuel back up due to intermittence and the doubling of the price of electricity (Denmark experience) it is hard to understand how the project has got past first base. Last week at PM questions, an English MP succinctly summed up the situation with windfarms. He said 'windfarms are being opposed by local people but being imposed on them by the authorities'. This is exactly what is happening in Shetland. It has to be stopped.

The government's conservation watchdog has been accused of putting wildlife and wild places at risk by preparing to relax its defences against development. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is under fire from environmental groups and insiders for allowing plans for a coal mine and wind farms to go ahead, despite the damage they could do to rare birds and peat bogs. Critics warn that a review of corporate strategy being led by SNH chairman Andrew Thin could result in more damaging developments being given the go-ahead. Fears have been fuelled by a recent interview in which Thin said he was neither a conservationist nor an environmentalist.

In the blood of every Briton runs at least a little seawater. We sing of the sea, romanticise our maritime heritage and regard the beach holiday as a nationally affirming birthright. Every year we potter in our millions down to the sea with bucket, spade, snorkel, jet-ski, paperback, shark defence kit and inadequate quantities of suncream. Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside; but we have a strange way of showing it. For the past 300 years or so, we have poisoned and plundered the sea; we have destroyed the seabed, killed the fish and bemired the vast oceans with our waste. We wring our hands at the pollution and devastation we have visited on the land, but because we cannot see what is happening beneath the dark waters surrounding this island we somehow assume it will mend itself...........The Bill is not simply some worthy Magna Carta for beleaguered British fish, since it also sets out clear rules for exploiting the sea by fishermen, oil prospectors, dredgers and energy farmers. The Bill will make it far easier to build and operate offshore wind farms, developments to harness wave power, and schemes for storing carbon emissions from power stations in former oilfields. So far from ducking the issue, as successive governments have done, the marine Bill aims to balance competing interests and face up to the inevitable but not insoluble conflict between exploitation and preservation. But in politics, as at sea, the weather changes quickly. The marine Bill, promised in Labour's manifesto of 2005, was expected to become law within a year, but suddenly it seems to have slipped off the political agenda. Gordon Brown did not even mention marine protection in his summer statement, and the marine Bill is not included in his planned legislative programme for next year. The Bill has been kicked into the long seaweed. It is the big one that got away, again.

Our seas must have proper protection - now! In due course, we shall be organising signature sheets in support of this Marine Bill and hope the people of North Devon will show this new Government that we are as keen to protect creatures living in our oceans as we are to protect our local wildlife and landscapes.

New Scientist's report on the large number of bats succumbing to wind turbines reinforces a common misperception - that the blades move slowly (12 May, p4). It is true that the blades of older, small wind turbines rotated rapidly and so would appear to a bird or bat as a semi-solid disc to be avoided. Modern 2-megawatt wind turbines make an apparently lazy 10 to 20 revolutions per minute, but the blades are around 40 metres long. Simple geometry shows that the blade tips travel at between 150 and 300 kilometres per hour. For a bird or bat in misty weather, these aircraft-sized blades appear from nowhere at intervals of between 2 and 4 seconds, a scenario that even a fighter pilot would find alarming.

The remote plantations some 10 miles south of Strathy village are now dominated by a couple of tall anemometer masts; there are few places in the Far North where you can get away from the threat of wind farms, big or small. There are currently 20 wind farms going through the planning process in Caithness and north Sutherland. Enjoy these wild places while you can: if the turbines go up, yet another of our landscapes will be tamed and industrialised. I had to walk right under one of the masts to gain the main Strathy track; the bothy, much appreciated by those who like really out-of-the-way spots, will be in the heart of the proposed wind farms. But as of now it is still as quiet and secluded a place as any. At night there is just untamed wind and starlight, and you are at least four miles from the nearest other person. Rattling showers passed, leaving clear starry skies. I enjoyed a candlelit fireside meal and had an early night. The strong westerlies should give me an easy ride home on the morrow!

The RSPB argues that it supports the use of wind power in general as long as projects are sited, designed and managed so they do not significantly harm birds or their habitats. Concerns on this score have led the RSPB to object to 76 windfarm proposals (on and offshore) between 2000 and 2004 and to raise concerns about a further 129. (It does not indicate how often it has decided to raise no concerns). In raising objections, the RSPB would argue that it is simply exercising its legal rights and representing its one million members to ensure that planning decisions are made with due consideration for the environmental impacts - the Lewis peat bogs, for example, are designated as of European importance under the Conservation of Wild Birds Directive and have the highest populations of dunlin and golden plover in Europe. Windfarm developers would argue that the biggest threat to bird populations remains global warming and that perhaps the RSPB has its priorities wrong.

On reading the letters in the press, it amazes me to discover how many so-called Greens there are out there who are in favour of industrial wind turbines being put up over our lovely Devon landscape........Anyone who has bothered to analyse the facts and figures will realise they are not economically a viable source of energy and will do next to nothing to cut CO2 emissions. They are not environmentally friendly. They are not really green.

SIR - As a keen bird watcher, I am a regular visitor to the Knowstone area and was alarmed at the proposal to put up massive wind turbines in the Batsworthy Cross area. The area is totally unsuitable for such a development. Has anyone considered how dangerous these structures would be to drivers on the busy A361? They would be an extremely hazardous distraction at such very close proximity.

It may be the time to consider how wind farms fit in with the values which the Wilderness Society represents. If the Society is prepared to go through such a prolonged and worthy fight to save the forests, with all the financial and emotional costs involved, it would be consistent to regard wind farm development with the same scepticism with which it regards the wood chip industry. Both are potent adversaries to the values which I hope we share.