A National Park in Galloway will be bad for Doonhamers and Gallovidians
The new national park in #DumfriesandGalloway will be a boon for Scotland's tourism but will be devastating to the residents of Dumfries and Galloway.
Before we begin please note these predictions of the effects of a national park are across a 10-20-year timescale.
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National parks have a track record of increasing second-home and holiday home ownership over local home ownership and rent, which leads to depopulation. For instance, between 2011 and 2021 every English National Park had a population decrease.
Farmers and other non-tourist businesses will struggle with expanding operations and dealing with the limitations that a national park will bring to the planning regime. For instance, in a national park region of you want to erect a small greenhouse to grow some Tomatoes you will need to get planning permission.
Housing costs will force, over time, locals to relocate to the major towns of Dumfries and Stranraer, putting pressure on local housing stock and increasing traffic on the A75. According to the Nationwide House Price Index, a national park on average will add 25% to house prices.
Local transportation is not geared up or designed for an increase in visitor numbers. Rebuilding railways or expanding the A75 will become almost impossible.
Galloway is an active farming and forestry economy, with tourism as a sideshow in comparison, Overtourism is a real danger to both of these industries, as it would shift the incentives towards glamping and holiday lets over fields for grazing sheep.
National parks skewer the rewards for building and renting family homes to local people and shift them towards smaller holiday flats and cottages.
Increases in associated housing costs would put pressure on the NHS and other local public service jobs, Dumfroes and Galloway already struggle in their public sector recruitment.
The national park is likely to have a dual demographic impact, increasing the age of incomers and second homeowners whilst pushing more young and family-age people from the region. Making many of the above problems worse.
In short, a Galloway national park as it is currently envisioned will damage the local economy for local people, however, it will make people from Glasgow and Edinburgh happy, which is the sole reason the SNP exist these days.