Eighty years ago  in April 1933, the manageress of the Drumnadrochit Hotel saw 'something resembling a whale' on Loch Ness while on the road from Inverness. Her sighting  was to herald the start of  the modern day legend of the Loch Ness Monster.
After subsequent sightings and reports in the local newspaper, within a few short months the story developed in to a world wide sensation, establishing Loch Ness and the monster legend in the psychi of millions of people and creating a tourism phenomena which is arguably as strong today. As a result on April 6th this year 'Nessie at 80' is being staged as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
One of the organisers of 'Nessie at 80', Charles Paxton, a research fellow at St Andrew's University while not a 'believer' is quick to point out out the massive impact that these early sightsings of Nessie had on the area.. but has it lasted the test of time? Eighty years on the area around Loch Ness is still very sparcely populated (no bad thing!) with to a large extent indadequate tourism infrastructure .  The fact is that for years visitors have come to Loch Ness , 'taken the photo' and moved on without staying in the area and thus injecting much income in to the local economy. Things are changing , the area has much more to offer the visitor than even 10 years ago but there is still huge tourism potential in the area which is not based on the monster legend. So, I would say, certainly Nessie has been and continues to be a marketeers dream but please don't say that it has brought huge economic benefit to the area because it simply has not... 

It's not often in Scotland that we hear of wildlife attacking people but last week in Inverness that's what happened. An eagle owl, which has possibly escaped from an aviary, started terrorising people in the centre of Inverness - one man described having to fend off the owl with his fists  as it swooped on him repeatedly and another was left with a 3 inch gash to his head after he was knocked to the ground. Efforts so far to capture the owl (which has a wingspan of 6ft) have failed, and experts say that it could be many months before this happens. In the meantime the public have been warned not to  approach or try and feed the bird !