MSPs to explore national tree plan

Jan 8 2013

MSPs are to press the Scottish Government on how to designate a national tree for Scotland.

Members of Holyrood's Public Petitions Committee agreed to contact ministers after hearing a plea for the "iconic" Scots pine to be made the country's national tree.

Campaigner Alex Hamilton has submitted a petition calling for the tree to be given the designation.

The petition has already won the backing of a number of environmental organisations, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Trees for Life, the Woodland Trust Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

Both Mr Hamilton and Alan Watson Featherstone, the founder and executive director of Trees for Life, made their case to the committee, arguing creating a national tree would be fitting given 2013 has been designated the Year of Natural Scotland.

MSPs agreed to consider the issue and will write to the Scottish Government, asking about the potential process for declaring a national tree for Scotland.

Nationalist Adam Ingram said: "We need to know how to go about the designation of a national tree for Scotland."

Mr Watson Featherstone said: "There may not be a clear mechanism to do this, but a mechanism was found to declare this year the Year of Natural Scotland, so it can be done."

Committee convener David Stewart said: "When we are writing to the Scottish Government we could ask if we did go ahead what is the legal process."

Mr Hamilton told MSPs that 70 countries across the world already had a national tree but that Scotland currently did not, and he described having a national tree as being a "symbolic statement of a nation's aspirations and its commitment to woodland".