Among the photos of Adam Watson there are a number of Ballochbuie, an important remnant of the Caledonian Pine Forest on the Royal Family’s estate at Balmoral which was overgrazed for years and has now been fenced to keep the deer out.
I had not been intending to feature another of Adam’s photos so soon, but realised yesterday that the cabin in this photo bears an uncanny resemblance to the building in the photo that has been featured in the media across the world (see here for example) in the last few days:
Same style cabin, same style windows and, 26 years later, the wood has aged in a way one might expect.
What has this got to do with parkswatch? The caption by Adam’s photo notes “No Planning Application”. Those few words mean a lot.
Back in 1973 the planning system provided the only protection for Ballochbuie. While other parts of the Caledonian Pine Forest were being designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest, where operations such as the erection of new buildings required consent from the Nature Conservancy, land owned by the Royal Family was strangely omitted from the process. In 1971, for example, the eastern Cairngorms, which included the Pine Woods in Glen Quoich on the Mar Lodge Estate, were designated as a SSSI. But Ballochbuie, equally special and just a few miles downstream, was not.
It took another 25 years for Ballochbuie to be offered any protection. In June 1998, just before the Maxwell/Epstein visit, Ballochbuie was notified to the EU as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). The paperwork records that this was WITHOUT any management plan having been agreed with the Royal Family (see here). The woods at Creag Clunie, just east of Braemar and adjoining Ballochbuie, were included in the SAC notification. But whereas they were designated a SSSI at the same time (see here), Ballochbuie was not. It is still, to this day, exempt from the legal provisions that govern what landowners can do on SSSIs and the creation of the Cairngorms National Park in 2003 has done nothing to change that.
The relationship between Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell has raised important issues about how the Royal Family are trying to prevent one of their members from accounting for their actions under the criminal law. Adam Watson’s photo of the log cabin at Ballochbuie demonstrates that the Royal Family have also ignored or sought special dispensation from the civil law for a considerable period of time.
I hope that Adam’s photo might serve as a prompt to the world’s media to start taking a look at how the Royal Family are managing their land at Balmoral and Delnadamph, how this fits with their claims to care about the natural environment (see here) and why they have been exempted from important processes that apply to everyone else.
Those pictures are creepy. I’m certain it’s the same building as I used to walk past it on my way to a merlin site. One suspects more went on in that cabin than the Queen taking tea.
Was the royal estate exempt from planning control back then? I am sure that I remember that they argued to have their land exempted from the WACA 8?
I expect that the legal doctrine of Crown Immunity may have pertained back then. This exempted the Crown from onerous legislation unless Parliament intended otherwise.
They have more resources than most to comply with laws made in their own name, do they not?
adjective
ONEROUS : (of a task or responsibility) involving a great deal of effort, trouble, or difficulty.
“he found his duties increasingly onerous”
LAW
involving heavy obligations.
“an onerous lease”
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmhaff/540/54014.htm
I recognised the building from the recently publicised photos straight away. I recall going there with my dad when I was little, possibly when that 1973 pic was taken. A nice lodge in an amazing setting, if it weren’t for the fact that it just appeared out of the blue, and the lack of duty of care, siting it there in the first place.
Yes it is the same cabin. I too have sat there too a good few times having lunch/coffee when going through the Ballochbuie. It is not just a cabin but, as I have been informed, it contains a sauna – and the pool created outside for plunging into at the end.
In all fairness to the Royals regarding rewilding, quite a lot has actually been done. Limited areas around the Glas Alt Shiel have been fenced off to create woodlands. On a larger scale, when my wife and I went up Broad Cairn this summer, we went along the SW side of Loch Muick, certainly SW of the Black Burn, the whole slope right up is covered by very diverse and quite dense regeneration. An opportunity that has been missed on that side of Loch Muick is that say 15 years ago it held one of the last populations of wild holly in the eastern highlands – but under grazing pressure. But it has now largely gone. On Delnadamph, they have fenced off a large side glen to cause regeneration. They have fenced it off using rylock but put that on upside down so that the larger wire squares near the top are at ground level to permit passage of birds etc.