Please may we have our Bonnie Banks back?

So many problems, so little time: James Freeman (above) laments a

litany of failure on loch and mountain.

Faces of environmental concern: the Countess of Glasgow and Sir Peter

Hutchison on the edge of Loch Lomond, where a seminar on the future of

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs was held earlier this month.

THE time has come for sanity to be restored to Scotland's countryside,

with the worst pressure points now crying out for visionary management.

Sadly, however, time is no longer on our side. And nowhere is this more

evident than at the Cairngorms and Loch Lomond, where the pressure

cooker lid is most likely to blow.

In the Cairngorms mountain-bikers have taken to the high tops and

great sub-Arctic plateaux, to test their hi-tech machines among some of

Europe's rarest flora and fauna. Ben Lomond and the Trossachs hills are

receiving the same treatment, and Ben Lomond can play host to 1200

walkers on a good summer day.

On Loch Lomond's islands, trees have been hacked or sawed down. Some

power-boaters even carry chainsaws to avoid gathering driftwood for

bonfires. There is ugly litter on the most remote shores.

The ancient Scots pine of the Cairngorms forests cannot regenerate

because there are twice as many red deer as there should be. The

sporting lairds, say cynics, want it that way because it makes for

easier kills for their European stalking

clients. The litany goes on.

The main reason for the dramatic deterioration of Loch Lomond's

environment is the proliferation of power craft, encouraged by local

authorities looking to a convenient natural resource for job-creation.

The destruction of Loch Lomond's natural beauty and tranquillity, the

wasting of its natural resources since the war, will stand forever as a

shameful monument to the failure of Labour Party local government in the

west of Scotland. Entrusted with stewardship of our best-loved

landscape, it has turned it into a giant, unregulated playground for a

relative handful of power-boat owners clearly incapable of appreciating

the loch's delicacy and significance.

The Cairngorms are a different matter, with equally complex problems

involving a different breed of bogymen. Yet there are undeniable

similarities. Highland Regional Council stands accused of trying to

magic jobs out of the landscape in a similar manner, turning, or failing

to turn, Aviemore into an apology for Disneyland and acquiescing in the

unstructured exploitation of the very landscape it requires desperately

to preserve. The degree of failure is just as great, but high Tory

lairds and big forestry capital are involved -- protected species in the

Highlands.

The major point now at stake is whether matters are going to be

changed for the better by current Government initiatives, the working

party reports into both areas. Public opinion has run far ahead of

Scottish Office action on these

issues, leading to accusations that the Tories would rather not get

involved in the controversies, and

especially not in the long-term financial responsibilities.

By loading the remits of both working parties, they successfully

deflected the seminal issue of national parks in Scotland, which would

have provided at a stroke the hard-edged legislative framework to roll

back the years of neglect and misuse. Some believe that the national

parks question is so basic, however, that it will not go away.

Isobel, Countess of Glasgow, chairperson of the Scottish Council for

National Parks, is one. She says: ''I do not think you can ever close

the door on national parks but it will be a long process.''

Why is the Government so set against national parks?

''Search me,'' she says. ''It is a large financial commitment at a

time when the Government has to make priorities. I don't think it is a

plot by landowners, although many are worried about having large numbers

of people coming on to their land -- the honeypot effect attributed to

national parks.

''This is not how we see it. National parks are a way of better

administering land already under pressure from visitors. I have

difficulty in understanding why it has turned its back on them, but

national parks are a way of getting central government to make long-term

commitments for running delicate areas. You must assume it's afraid of

this.''

THERE is a point where the Government-sponsored reports on the

Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs coincide very pointedly.

Implementation of the principle of sustainability implies that the

carrying capacity of the natural environment in the area, or its

capacity to withstand pressure without deterioration, must not be

exceeded, states the Cairngorms Report.

Apply that to Loch Lomond and, even at a superficial level, it is

apparent that the loch is past the point of sustainability. The physical

environment is degrading, wildlife has either vanished or is

diminishing, the underwater ecology is a disaster area, and there is

intense conflict of use between environmentally-unfriendly water

''sports'' practitioners and anglers, yachtsmen, canoeists and family

cruisers.

Hannah Stirling, chairman of Friends of Loch Lomond, points out that

before the era of high-speed power boats and jet skis the problems were

minimal. And, even as Sir Peter Hutchison's excellent report goes

through its consultation process, another detrimental usage has arrived

-- paragliding behind enormous speedboats.

There has been one tragedy this year already, and the general feeling

is that a major disaster is just a matter of time. Drug-taking materials

have been found on some of the beaches.

Meanwhile, the local authority-run Loch Lomond Park Authority remains

in near paralysis on the question of introducing by-laws to regulate the

free-for-all. This has extended to the point where the commitment of the

political masters of the park authority, essentially the Labour groups

on Strathclyde and Central Regional Councils and on Dumbarton and

Stirling District Councils, must come into doubt.

But while the Civic Government Scotland Act may be partly to blame,

the local politicos are largely to blame. They have run the park on a

shoestring, while, with another hat, granting more and more planning

permissions for marina developments until the build-up of craft of an

unacceptable type has run out of hand. Every hotelier or developer

wanting to make a buck has been given carte blanche, and still the

development proposals flow in.

One hapless hotel manager inadvertently summed up the truth of the

matter when he stated in a newspaper interview that Loch Lomond was

three times larger than Windermere and had only a fifth of the craft of

that lake. His vision was clearly that of many Loch Lomond developers --

a Lake Windermere-type hell hole with money rolling in from petrol,

booze, and junk food.

IT WOULD be unfair not to acknowledge that in creating the Loch Lomond

Park Authority local government took a unique initiative. But the reason

the authority failed is easily illustrated by reference to the by-laws

issue.

Allowing for the obscurity of the Civic Government Scotland Act, the

fact is that the clerk to the authority is a full-time solicitor with

Dumbarton District Council who fits in the Loch Lomond work as and when

he can on a part-time basis. The by-law attempt has ground to a

near-standstill; conflicting interests would in any case mean a halfway

house, zoning instead of a blanket 10mph speed ban, with an unmanageable

shambles resulting.

Sir Peter's proposed agency with its attendant task-force and most of

its funds (hopefully) coming from central government, is obviously a

major step forward. A closer examination of the Cairngorm partnership

idea, however, suggests that the working party there has ended up with a

suspiciously familiar framework.

Whereas Sir Peter appears to have produced a model similar to the

original English national parks set-up, (recognised as inadequate and

beefed up), the Cairngorms working party is touting something close to

the failed Loch Lomond Park Authority. And where the Loch Lomond agency

would at least have planning powers, these would continue to reside with

the individual authorities in the Cairngorm Partnership.

There is therefore no chance, says Mike Scott of the Save the

Cairngorms Campaign, of the whole area being managed as a single entity.

What is going to change overnight the conflicts of interest that exist

between those such as Highland and Grampian regions? he asks. Their

priorities are different, just as the priorities of the regional and

district authorities sharing Loch Lomond are different. Partnership

failed Loch Lomond and will fail the Cairngorms for the same reasons.

''There is general consensus that the partnership proposal is better

than nothing,'' says Scott, ''but not a great deal better. At least

there would be responsibility for what is happening, someone at whom the

finger could be pointed. We will accept it at face value but if it is

not working within five years, something will have to replace it.''

Something considerably stronger is necessary for the Cairngorms, he

believes.

Whatever answers Ian Lang comes up with, no-one -- apart from him and

his apologists -- appears to retain any faith that the voluntary

principle can work.

The Loch Lomond speed-boaters have treated the voluntary code with

contempt. The Cairngorm lairds are a law unto themselves as far as deer

are concerned, or when it comes to driving Land Rover roads through the

wilderness. Mike Scott says: ''With deer numbers, what is actually

proposed is not the voluntary principle, but what I call the prostitute

principle. If you pay them enough money they will lie down and do what

you ask them. That is an incredibly inefficient way to dispose of public

money.''

Amid all the weighty deliberations, two key areas have been

marginalised -- the future of the fishery on Loch Lomond and the Alpine

skiing on Cairngorm. The Save the Cairngorms people are reconciled to

the presence of the ski area. It has been there for three decades, and

provided it shows no further expansionist ambitions, there will be

little overt objection to its continuance.

But few other countries, it must be said, would have first stood aside

and then actively co-operated in the degradation of an outstanding

natural fishery like Loch Lomond. Without a blanket speed-limit, the

destruction will be complete.