What next? A stag weekend on Kilimanjaro?

Instead of wrecking the world's beauty spots, we should stay in our own backyard

A most irresponsible and unhealthy television programme is to be found on one of those doner kebab channels that you only watch after a late-night visit to the Turkish fast-food emporium, drink having been taken. I think it's called 101 Things to Do Before You Die and features an assortment of intrepid pursuits that the middle classes feel they must do before settling down to choosing the sex of their designer babies.

In this, you are asked to entertain the idea of swimming with jellyfish (Jagus posterium) in the Florida Keys and playing blind man's buff with puff adders (Fangis truculosis) on a Moroccan savanna. Such exertions are meant to convey a sense that you can recalibrate your life by communing with nature and doing edgy things with Her. These sorts of vapid adventures have become part of the modern and slightly malevolent cult of physical extremism which is afflicting teachers and other people with too much time on their hands. As organised religion rapidly declines as a force in people's lives, the spiritual void has been replaced by bungee-jumping on Mt Krakatoa, dancing with grizzlies and injecting heroin with Mayan Indians.

At first, all this may appear to be harmless fun and a good way of becoming ecological, global and environmental, but there is a sinister downside. If something isn't done about it, and soon, the world's wild and really interesting places could suffer destruction of apocalyptic proportions.

At the top of my at-risk list is Mt Kilimanjaro, that splendid big mountain in East Africa, and it's beginning to worry me. Last week, I learned that an otherwise blameless friend had just embarked on a thoughtless expedition to this diadem of African topography to raise money for "chari'y n' that". That brings to six the total of Glaswegian punters I know who have been up this grand and historic hill.

When you get to a certain point on this extinct volcano, it must come to resemble Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night. Indeed, it can only be a matter of time before Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the continent, is subjected to the ultimate indignity: a Scottish stag weekend or hen party. At this rate, there will soon be a Scottish souvenir store and the tartan army will be swarming up it en route to our next friendly match in Africa. I quote here from the official How to Climb Mt Kilimanjaro Guide for People of the Scottish Nation: "You are advised to research this mountain thoroughly and it helps that you are appropriately equipped and in good condition. This is a pure high mountain and it can get a bit chilly. So you should do some acclimatisation."

I fear, though, that many of my fellow countrymen travel to this exotic location having only visited the Army and Navy Stores for winter woollies and with merely a couple of peregrinations in the Campsies to get acclimatised. I think it is about time we all left Mt Kilimanjaro alone for a while and an exclusion zone should be established around it for five years to prevent charity trekkers going anywhere near it. In that way, it can be left to get back to normal and regain the splendour that nature intended for it.

I fear also that the curse of the charity adventurers has left its infernal mark on some other of our planet's great unspoilt wildernesses. Did you see the picture in the papers recently of that small tribe of Amazonian Indians in a jungle clearing, peering up at a passing plane? It was thought that, until then, they had been unsullied by contact with the modern world as we know it. I have my doubts, though. Look again at the anxiety on their innocent wee faces and then behold the tell-tale detritus scattered around them.

Is that not a Tennent's lager can and a half-empty bottle of Irn-Bru? And the shiny bits of paper look suspiciously like discarded Benson & Hedges packets. Another misshapen object could even be the carcass of a half-eaten Domino's pizza. It all adds up to another unconscionable incursion by a selfish troupe of Scottish fundraisers doing their bit for charity but destroying the splendid isolation of these happy people as they do so.

When the rainforest dwellers start singing "…and I have walked 500 miles and I will walk 500 more", you'll know that it is all sadly too late. I want to know what the World Wildlife Fund is doing about it, for make no mistake, the shrinking habitats of the snow leopard and the Bengal tiger will soon also be under threat.

The heartbreaking tragedy of all this untrammelled poking about in the world's great spaces is that it's all so unnecessary. Have we not got enough of our own?

I've been known to get involved in a bit of charity work myself; the odd sponsored Glasgow underground pub crawl and a walk around Hogganfield loch. But if you are one of those outdoor types, then why need you look any further than the majestic and vertiginous beauty of the Highlands? There are stacks and stacks of Munros and, well, what else are Skye, Mull and the West Highland Way for? I've even lurched up a couple myself where I encountered wildlife such as sheep, cows and goats in their natural habitat. I saw people wearing tartan in an everyday fashion and others singing lilting songs about the Highland clearances and the Jacobite rebellion which are all part of the oral tradition in those parts.

So I propose that the Scottish Green party makes itself useful for a change and begins a campaign to stop the tartan despoliation of other people's places and stick to despoiling their own.

I'll start by handing a petition in to Patrick Harvie at Holyrood later this week, once somebody points him out to me. I shall also write to Scottish Television and entreat it to bring back Tom Weir's classic series exploring our country's own wild spaces, Walking With Teuchters.