A LEADING conservationist has put forward ideas for developing renewable energy in the North York Moors National Park.

Writing in Voice of the Moors, the quarterly magazine of the North Yorkshire Moors Association, editor John Farquhar said he wanted to see the use of bio-fuels - woodburning stoves, methane generation from farm waste, charcoal burning and briquets, and heat pumps.

Mr Farquar, who is also an official of the Ryedale branch of the Council to Protect Rural England, said the North York Moors National Park Authority could help to encourage the initiatives through subsidy and advice which would help to creater "a greener park".

He also suggested the use of solar panels and the encouragement of mini-hydro installations along the rivers in the park and Ryedale and "reluctantly" small windmills if sit-ed among farm buildings or in an unobtrusive location.

Mr Farquar conceded they were not the complete answer.

"None of them is going to dramatically reduce our dependence on centrally generated electricity or the internal combustion engine, but together they would make a meaningful contribution towards the national target for the reduction of carbon mon-oxide emissions."

He said there was increasing pressure to adopt green technology.

"A regional guidance proposes a 'target' of 183 megawatts of renewable electricity by 2010 for North Yorkshire, including four windfarms, four wind clusters and six large single turbines," he said. But he questioned where they could be sited.

"I feel strongly that such installations have no place in a national park which has been designated so that its natural beauty can be preserved.

"If we must have them - and there are growing doubts about how great a contribution they can make in view of the intermittent nature of the source - then they should be sited offshore or within an already industrialised landscape such as the Tees or Humber estuaries."