By Huw Williams For BBC News Online Scotland

The cameras must be installed on the island this summer

Last year just 1,500 people were able to enjoy the unique beauty of St Kilda first hand.

I count myself enormously privileged that I was one of them.

But getting there took a long time - including getting turned back on our first attempt by a force eight gale.

And once you are there, you are continually struck by how potentially fragile the place is.

It's the classic double bind. More people want - indeed ought - to enjoy these islands and appreciate how important they are.

Big Brother house

But if they come, they will wreck the very wildness they want to see.

Part of the answer might be remote controlled cameras, like the ones they use in the Big Brother house.

Now the scheme, first floated at the end of last year, is to become reality.

The Millennium Commission, the Wellcome Trust, and the Wolfson Foundation are jointly making a grant of �120,000 to pay for it - and the work gets under way immediately.

Once you are there, you are continually struck by how potentially fragile the place is Huw Williams

The cameras have to be in place by this summer, otherwise St Kilda's sometimes ferocious weather will mean nothing can be done until spring 2004.

Once they are there, the equipment - which has been designed to withstand winds of up to 120 miles an hour - will use satellite technology to feed live and interactive pictures back to the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick.

The centre said visitors will be able to pan and zoom the cameras to watch close-ups of St Kilda's wildlife from above and below water level.

And it is promising that picture quality will be so good, you will be able to read the numbers on the rings on birds feet from 300 miles away.

The cameras come with built-in night vision, so they will be able to spy on St Kilda's night-life, including the activities of birds like the petrels and shearwaters which are only nocturnal.

'Unnatural environments'

And they have got remotely controlled windscreen wipers too, to cope with rain and, er, "fouling" by the birds.

The National Trust for Scotland, which owns St Kilda, says this is an ideal way of allowing more people to appreciate the place, without damaging the wildness which makes it so special.

Mike O'Connor, the director of the Millennium Commission, said: "In the past we went to see animals in unnatural zoo environments.

"We now have the capacity to see animals in their natural environment and the Scottish Seabird Centre will provide just that opportunity using innovative technology to remotely view sea birds in a World Heritage Site."

Abandoned homes

The people of St Kilda survived for centuries on produce from subsistence agriculture, and on eating seabirds and eggs.

However, they abandoned their home in August 1930 and moved to the Scottish mainland.

More recently the islands have been listed by UNESCO, and earlier this year they were nominated for a second time to recognise their unique place in Scottish culture and heritage.