Scottish farmer hits Trump golf plan into rough

BALMEDIE (Reuters) - The wild stretch of east coast Scottish shoreline near Balmedie village hardly looks the setting for a battle between America's most famous property tycoon and a stubborn farmer.

But this idyllic village is near where U.S. "Apprentice" boss Donald Trump wants to build a billion-pound golf resort, a five-star hotel, 950 time-share apartments and 500 houses, providing he can overcome the objections of Michael Forbes.

The determined 55-year-old salmon farmer has enlisted the support of well-wishers from around the world in his fight to stop Trump developing the Menie Estate near Balmedie beach, some 13 miles (21 km) north of the city of Aberdeen.

He is also refusing to sell land to Trump which sits right in the middle of the proposed development, believes the U.S. developer's plans offer little for Scotland and is hacked off at Trump for describing the state of his property as "disgusting".

"They say that money talks; not with me it doesn't," Forbes told Reuters. "He has no chance of getting it. Take your insult and shove it. Do not bother me again: NOT FOR SALE."

Local opinion is sharply divided ahead of a key meeting on Tuesday when councillors are due to make an initial ruling on Trump's plans while the letters for and against keep pouring in.

The golf resort would be Trump's sixth, but the only one on this side of the Atlantic.

It would, he says, be a product of his links with Scotland. His mother grew up on a croft in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

"Because my mother is Mary MacLeod from Stornoway -- she lived in Stornoway for many years, I guess about 20 years before she came to the United States -- I really had a preference for Scotland, and it's also the home of golf," Trump said in an interview posted on a Web site created by his company to promote the development (www.trumpgolfscotland.com).

"We saw a piece of land in Scotland that was really beautiful. And it's our ambition to ... build the best course anywhere in Europe and maybe the best course in the world and I think we have the piece of land to do it."

The development provides a "unique opportunity to conserve and enhance the environment", according to Trump International.

Trump was quoted in Britain's Guardian newspaper as saying he is "saving" the dunes: "It's a piece of land which is disappearing ...it's blowing all over the place."

But environmental groups, including government conservation agency Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and pressure group Sustainable Aberdeenshire, have criticised the plans to stabilise a rare, 4,000-year-old dynamic sand dune system -- one of the top five dune habitats in Britain.

SNH says the development would effectively destroy a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) that covers about a third of the resort and is an important habitat for flora and fauna.

"It's all a marketing device to sell high value properties: it's exploitation of our resource and it's a particularly sensitive and beautiful resource that we don't want to give up," Sustainable Aberdeenshire spokesman Mickey Foote said.

Some 150 protestors are due to march on Saturday.

Over and above environmental concerns, the "No to Trump, Menie Not Money" action group, which has organised the march, believes the proposals will blight the landscape and lead to the loss of the public's right to roam over the dunes.

"Turn Menie into a golf course, and everyone's right of access no longer applies," it says on its Web site (www.meniescotland.co.uk).

But, for all of those against Trump, there are as many for.

"Stop shilly shallying and come out in favour of the Trump golf development," writes Norman Wilson, from Forglen, Turriff, in the letters page of the local paper, the Press & Journal.

Economic development and tourism agencies -- Scottish Enterprise and its Scottish Development International arm, Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce and VisitScotland -- have also come out in support.

(Editing by Steve Addison and Paul Casciato)