NatureScot will provide advice to the Scottish Government next week
Scottish ministers will be advised on Monday what the next steps should be on the proposal for a new National Park in Galloway.
NatureScot will provide advice that will include reports from the fourteen week consultation process that has been carried out.
The government agency said that this advice “will be carefully considered by ministers, laid before the Scottish Parliament, then published by NatureScot on a date to be confirmed by Scottish Government”.
Organisations involved are not expecting to see the report made public at this point, but they said this is a significant moment which moves us another step forward in the process of designating a new National Park for Scotland.
Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, said: “We welcome this next step forward in the process towards designating Scotland’s next National Park, more than twenty years since our existing two National Parks were established.
“Scotland, with its wealth of world class landscapes, has only two National Parks. With three in Wales and ten in England, it is high time that our landscapes, and the communities within them, had the investment and recognition they deserve.”
John Thomson, chair of the Scottish Campaign for National Parks, added: "The process for designating a National Park is a complex and protracted one, involving - as it should - extensive public consultation.
“Now that NatureScot have reported their findings, we keenly await the minister's decision and hope that Galloway and Ayrshire will soon enjoy the benefits that we are convinced that a National Park will bring.”
Let us hope that the NatureScot reports fairly and accurately represents the many concerns of people and communities across the length and breadth of Dumfries & Galloway, South Ayrshire and East Ayrshire and that Scottish Government parks their expensive and half-baked plans on receipt of the reports. Independent evaluation of the two existing parks must take place. Lessons must be learned from the whole debacle of a process of choosing and announcing the "winning" bid that has divided communities. There is no clear majority local support that the Bute House Agreement stipulated was necessary to proceed.