I was pleased to be quoted in an article in the National on Saturday (see here) about how the Scottish Parliament still drafts legislation designed to exclude the Royal Family and Crown Estate. Twenty 20 years ago outdoor recreational interests successfully fought to close a loophole which would have meant access rights did not apply…
Tag: landed estates
Last Friday the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) Board rejected the planning application to construct a new road round Newtonmore that would have connected the Pitmain and Glen Banchor estates (see here). The video of the meeting is still on the internet, which is contrary to the usual practice of the CNPA but is a…
The Gynack flood alleviation channel was constructed in 2017 and started to erode away as soon as it was used before it was closed due to the risks of catastrophic failure (see here). Ostensibly designed to reduce flood risks in Kingussie by diverting some of the flow of the Allt Mhor into Loch Gynack, the…
Last week I travelled up the A83 and over the Rest and Be Thankful for the first time in over a year. What first caught my eye was the number of new tree shelters on the hillside. In 2020 Forest and Land Scotland committed to reduce its use of plastic tree shelters to a minimum…
It is almost two years since my last post on the Cononish goldmine (see here) and five since the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) granted it planning permission. Since the mine was first mooted there has been a steady stream of “news” stories from the owners, Australian Company Scotgold Resources Ltd, about…
For the last few years the Herald has carried a full page feature about once a week on the climate emergency and nature crises. Every 4-6 weeks this involves NatureScot, the new brand name for what is legally still Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Sometimes these pieces are written by NatureScot – often under the name…
Not far above the start of the path up Beinn Dubh which I went up ten days ago (see see), there is a fine stand of oak trees, called Strone Wood. I have not researched its history but, like the other oak woods round Loch Lomond, it is likely to owe its existence to our…
This post provides an update to what I wrote in October on Forest and Land Scotland’s purchase of the Glen Prosen estate (see here). So far, Forest and Land Scotland has issued not a single news release https://forestryandland.gov.scot/news-releases about their purchase or their plans. Nor does it appear to have published any other information which…
Following on from my post on peat bog restoration in Glen Banchor (see here), in 2020/21 three new woodland enclosures were erected along the River Calder as part of a conservation project. It involved a fair amount of machinery, raw materials (including bags of cement just out of the photo) and materials for fencing. How…
On 4th November the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) notified all those who had commented that the proposal to create a 4.83 km road linking the Pitmain and Glenbanchor Estates, allegedly for forestry purposes, had been withdrawn (on 27th October). In a post the following day (see here) I highlighted the lack of any explanation…
The title of the Scottish Government’s consultation, “Wildlife Management in Scotland” (see here), which closed yesterday, was very revealing. Despite the nature emergency and the Scottish Government’s commitment to protect 30% of the land by 2030 (see here), there were no questions about how natural processes could be restored or we might reverse the catastrophic…
A week ago the Ferret (see here) exposed how the Tulchan Estate, on the northern boundary of the Cairngorms National Park, was being funded both to restore damaged peatland and to burn moorland in the same small area. A similar scandal is happening on King Charles’s grouse shooting estate, Delnadamph, on the upper reaches of…
Having highlighted the issue of forest fences being covered in plastic to prevent bird collisions a year ago (see here), it is very good to see that the Cairngorms Capercaillie Project has been doing more work with the Seafield estate to remove the orange netting. Unfortunately, rather than removing the fences completely, they have been…
Walking back down the road in upper Glen Falloch in September the difference in vegetation between the east and west banks of the River Falloch was striking. On the right of the photo you can see lots of natural regeneration, whereas on the left there is none. The Roy Map 1747-52 (see here) shows the…
Yesterday the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) notified those who had commented on the proposal by the Pitmain and Glen Banchor estates to build 4.83km of “forestry roads” above Newtonmore (see here) that the planning application had been withdrawn. Good news! Yet the reason why the application “has been withdrawn from the Cairngorms National Park…
Last week it was reported (see here, for example) that Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) are to buy 16,500 acres from the Glen Prosen estate for £25m to plant trees. This raises a number of important questions about land ownership and land-use in the Cairngorms National Park. It also illustrates some of the weaknesses with…
I have written several posts on parkswatch about the Royal Family’s environmental hypocrisy (see here for example), advocating action to tackle the climate and nature crises to the world while doing the opposite on the land they own in Scotland. But until now it has been very difficult to show simply how bad this is….
Landslips, flooding and riverside tree planting in Balquhidder – tackling the source of the problems
On Sunday I went for a walk in Balquhidder, which I had not visited since a beautiful day just before lockdown in 2020 when people were being advised to stay at home. On that day we came across just one person but we did see from close up the multiple land slips on both sides…
Following my post about the Pitmain Estate’s proposed telecommunications mast on the Corbett, Carn an Fhreiceadain (see here) I contacted the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) about the application and took the opportunity to ask what was happening with the proposal to create new roads linking the estate to Glen Banchor (see here). At the…
[Post updated 22nd September].After the planning application to build a telecommunications mast on Carn an Fhreiceadain in the Monadhliath Wild Land Area was withdrawn for the second time, following a significant number of objections, I commented (see here) that it was impossible to know if Savills or the Pitmain Estate would come back again. Six…
Last month it was reported that Brewdog had been awarded over £1m in grants by Scottish Forestry Scotland as part of its Lost Forest project at Kinrara. The Scottish Forestry website is very hard to use – searches for Brewdog, Kinrara and on its land based database all come up blank – and I have…
I have spent several days in the last couple of years in and around the Phoines Estate and, while not blogging about the estate itself, have included photos of way they manage the land in posts about muirburn madness (see here) and the politics of muirburn in the National Park (showing the state of the…
On Thursday, the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Minister, the Green MSP Lorna Slater, who also has responsibility for National Parks, launched a consultation (see here for news release) on creating a third National Park in Scotland. It is to credit of the Greens that they have forced the Scottish Government to reverse their longstanding opposition to…
Following the online protest organised by the Grampian Moorland Group against the National Park Partnership Plan (see here), Scotland’s “Regional Moorland Groups” have been putting a glossy leaflet through the door of every household in the Cairngorms National Park. The Moorland Groups are shadowy organisations (see here) that do not declare their membership so it…
It’s a while since I posted one of Adam Watson’s photos, contrasting then with now (see here), but I was reminded of this photo when starting out up Glen Ey late Friday afternoon. (It has featured on parkswatch before in a post by George Allan about the LINK hill tracks campaign (see here)). What you…