A DRAFT TEXT

THE BEINN MHOLACH WIND FARM PROJECT MUST BE STOPPED

Dear Councillor,

We appeal to you personally, as a Comhairle nan Eilean Siar councillor who will soon be asked to vote on the subject of erecting 6 wind turbines on the pristine landscape of the Isle of Lewis, to reject the Farm Energy application as planned within the boundaries of the SPA and Ramsar site.

If you approve this project you will be opening a modern Pandora’s Box for your island, your home. It will mean the foot in the door for 550 additional turbines which will transform your beautiful island into a vast industrial zone; at the permanent expense of the flora and fauna, with catastrophic economic effects for the tourism industry, and an irreversible spoliation of your home.

As worldwide environmentalists, birders or just ordinary nature lovers we urge you to prevent this irreversible damage by rejecting the proposals in their present form. Not least the protection of the habitat of the Golden Eagle, this magnificent bird which nature has entrusted to your care, is a pressing reason to have a full and frank public enquiry unfogged by carefully constructed and one-sided arguments from experts representing energy producers. They have only their shareholders to think of – you have a responsibility to you forbears and succeeding generations.

You still have a chance to stop this terrible rape of one of the most beautiful and natural areas in Britain and Europe. Use your responsibility well. Not only you and your children will thank you. A signal will be given to those planners and politicians elsewhere in Europe and the UK to follow your lead. Clean energy can be a good thing; but not at the expense of a permanent imbalance in nature and despoliation of the countryside. Money, not much of which will stay on the island, can be no recompense

Yours sincerely,

(Name and address)