LEAVE OUR HILLS ALONE
Leave Our Hills Alone is a community led group formed in response to the rapid expansion of large scale industrial energy developments across rural Scotland. We exist to protect our hills, glens, landscapes, wildlife, and communities from inappropriate and damaging development, and to ensure that local people retain a meaningful voice in decisions that permanently affect the places they live. Our group was established when residents recognised that proposals for industrial wind farms and associated infrastructure were advancing at a pace that left little room for proper scrutiny, informed debate, or genuine community consent. What began as local concern quickly grew into collective action, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds with a shared commitment to safeguarding the character and integrity of our countryside.
PROTECTING LANDSCAPES AND COMMUNITIES
We exist to defend Scotland’s hills, glens, peatlands, and rural communities from inappropriate industrial energy development. Our focus is on safeguarding places of environmental, cultural, and social value for current and future generations.
EVIDENCE, TRANSPARENCY, AND FAIR PROCESS
We challenge proposals using facts, scrutiny, and informed analysis. We support communities in understanding planning processes, environmental impacts, and their rights to participate meaningfully in decisions that permanently alter their surroundings.
INDEPENDENT, COMMUNITY LED, AND HONEST
We are independent of developers and corporate interests. Our work is driven by local voices, lived experience, and environmental responsibility, not profit or political expediency. We value honesty over spin and long term protection over short term gain.
WHAT WE DO
Our aim is to raise awareness of the proposed industrial wind turbine sites in the region and coordinate campaigns to fight them. With numerous wind farm applications submitted separately, it’s sometimes difficult to see the cumulative impact and typically they join together to form a much larger landscape of turbines than originally presented. We join with other groups and learn from each other to lobby both locally and nationally and campaign as a whole.
What We Stand For
Leave Our Hills Alone supports meaningful action to address climate change and recognises the responsibility to reduce carbon emissions at local, national, and global levels. We do not dispute the need for change, nor do we deny the urgency of the climate challenge. However, we believe that the response must be grounded in evidence, environmental integrity, and social responsibility, rather than driven by targets that prioritise speed over sustainability.
We stand for a balanced approach to energy policy that considers full lifecycle impacts, including material extraction, construction, carbon loss from peatland disturbance, biodiversity harm, and end of life disposal. Climate solutions that cause irreversible damage to sensitive ecosystems, fragment habitats, or undermine natural carbon stores cannot be considered sustainable, regardless of how they are labelled.
We believe that Scotland’s landscapes are not vacant or expendable. Hills, glens, and peatlands are complex living systems that provide ecological, cultural, and climate value. They support wildlife, regulate water, store carbon, and form an essential part of community identity. Industrial scale development in these areas must therefore meet the highest possible standards of environmental protection and justification.
Leave Our Hills Alone stands for transparency, accountability, and honesty in decision making. We challenge misleading or incomplete claims about carbon savings, economic benefit, and community gain. We support rigorous environmental assessment, independent scrutiny, and the recognition of cumulative impacts across multiple developments rather than isolated project by project approval.
We also stand for democratic participation and fairness in planning. Communities must be given the time, information, and genuine opportunity to engage with proposals that affect them. Consultation should be meaningful rather than procedural, and local knowledge should be valued rather than marginalised. Decisions that permanently alter landscapes must not be made without the informed consent and involvement of those who live there.
Finally, we stand for alternatives. We support the exploration of cleaner, more reliable, and less destructive energy solutions that protect landscapes while delivering genuine climate benefits. Our position is not one of opposition for its own sake, but of advocacy for approaches that respect both the environment and the communities that depend upon it.
Why We Exist
Across Scotland, communities are facing proposals for increasingly large wind farms, battery storage systems, solar parks, access tracks, substations, and grid infrastructure. These developments often bring irreversible landscape change, disruption to peatlands and hydrology, risks to protected wildlife, and cumulative impacts that are poorly assessed or underestimated.
At the same time, residents frequently encounter planning processes that are complex, inaccessible, and weighted in favour of developers. Consultations are often limited in scope, technical documents are difficult to interpret, and community concerns are too easily dismissed as obstacles rather than legitimate contributions.
Leave Our Hills Alone exists to challenge this imbalance. We work to ensure that local voices are heard, that environmental risks are properly examined, and that claims made in support of developments are tested against evidence and lived experience.
Our Approach
We believe in respectful, informed, and constructive engagement. Our work focuses on sharing clear information, helping residents understand proposals and planning processes, and supporting collective action based on evidence rather than fear.
We collaborate with individuals, community groups, and professionals who care about landscape protection, biodiversity, public health, and democratic accountability. We value local knowledge and lived experience, recognising that those who live in and care for these places are best placed to speak for them.
Our approach is independent and community driven. We are not funded by developers or aligned with corporate interests. Our priority is protecting the environment and the wellbeing of communities, not promoting any single technology or industry.
Looking Ahead
The challenges facing rural Scotland are not short term, and neither is our commitment. Leave Our Hills Alone is focused on building long term resilience, awareness, and cooperation between communities affected by large scale energy development.
We will continue to question proposals that threaten landscapes and ecosystems, to highlight environmental and social impacts that are overlooked or minimised, and to stand up for the right of communities to participate fully and meaningfully in decisions about their future.
Above all, we exist to say that Scotland’s hills, glens, and rural places are not empty spaces for industrial exploitation. They are living landscapes, valued by those who call them home, and they deserve protection.