Landscape body urges need for controls

"ATLANTIS swallowed up by Gotham City." Such was the bleak forecast presented to the Minister for the Environment yesterday, when he was urged to fund a partnership approach to landscape management.

Partnership could help to protect fragile landscapes, the Irish Uplands Forum said at yesterday's launch of its conference report by Mr Howlin. The success of the forthcoming national policy ion sustainable development hinged on this, forum chairman and Everest mountaineer Mr Frank Nugent said.

As a result of narrow approaches to decisions on mining, visitor centres, increased grazing and forestry, hydroelectric schemes, wind farms, telecommunications masts and division of commonage, even mountain areas had become "part of the battlefield, in which there are only losers", forum members said. There is also a cost to the State, as in the case of the interpretative centres controversy.

The forum represents communities, farmers, foresters, fishery owners, planners, conservationists, tourism interests and Government observers, and was established in December, 1995, to facilitate conflict resolution.

The report is the outcome of a three day conference, held in Galway last year. At the conference, the Belfast architect and Everest summit climber, Mr Dawson Stelfox, referred to the success of the Mournes Advisory Committee, when he called for a national strategy for conservation of the landscape and its human resources.

"A generation has been pitched forward towards a vision of a brave new world that has turned out to be a mirage of confusion. Atlantis has been swallowed up by Gotham City, the future is bleak and unsettling, and the confidence of a nation is undermined by the loss of its links with the past", he warned.