In a recent letter to the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald (29 June, see below) I suggested ways that the management of the land around Loch Morlich and nearby areas in Glenmore Forest Park could be improved to meet public concern over environmental degradation. Such improvement is likely to be far more important than the potential use of byelaws in the Cairngorms to control irresponsible camp fires and associated litter problems Existing legislation is already sufficient to deal with such problems, (see here) and (here), and is set out in Annex 1 of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code (see here). The only changes worth considering would be to increase the fines for offences under this existing legislation.

Account must also be taken of the Scottish Government’s National Litter and Flytipping Strategy, launched in June by the Circular Economy Minister, the Greens MSP Lorna Slater. As she is also responsible for Scotland’s national parks it would appear that Glenmore might be the perfect location for her to test out some of the ideas in this Strategy. If appropriate infrastructure developments and behavioural changes can be achieved in Glenmore there will be useful lessons learnt for wider application.

Most of the land at Glenmore is under the ownership of Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS). At the last Board meeting of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) the Chief Executive, Grant Moir, when referring to FLS management of this area, said:

“there is a need to have an on-site manager for Glenmore. I have said that before and I will say it again. For the amount of people who go into Glenmore, it needs on-site management”.

Highland Councillor Bill Lobban reinforced this message, saying:

“the rangers are doing the best job they possibly can. They are not there 24 hours per day….maybe we need to start thinking outside of the box such as providing facilities where visitors can have a barbeque without using charcoal”.

These comments all point to a woeful lack of effective action by FLS and their predecessors, the Forestry Commission, over several decades. Their performance can be contrasted with the National Trust for Scotland on the other side of the Cairngorms massif. There an on-site senior manager and other NTS staff ensure that effective, 24hr coverage, is present on the Mar Lodge Estate to deal with fire, litter and any other problems.  It is time for Scottish ministers to give clear instructions to FLS to ensure that the standards of management in Glenmore are at least as good as those being achieved by NTS elsewhere in these mountains.

The immediate future requires a 24hr presence by FLS whenever weather conditions and visitor numbers require this. FLS already accept that Glenmore is the “most pressured site in the country. There’s nowhere else that has to deal with the issues arising from that challenging combination of high visitor numbers and a concentration of environmental sensitivities”. But they also admit “but obviously we are not on site 24/7 and some of those issues happen very late at night and our staff are there during the day when it’s busiest” (see here for interview with Paul Hibberd, Regional Visitor Services Manager FLS, Inverness Courier 30 June 2023). FLS have “obviously” got their visitor management priorities all wrong if this is the best they can do in a location which is like no other place in Scotland.

FLS need to be reminded that they are supposed to work in Glenmore under the framework of the National Park Partnership Plan which guides the work of all public bodies within the national park and is approved by Scottish ministers. So why do they appear to be repeatedly ignoring the recommendations of the CNPA’s chief executive that this area needs an on-site manager, as was present in previous decades, and the comments of Board members at their last meeting that 24 hr management presence is required at critical times?  Perhaps Mr Hibberd should spend a night in a tent on Loch Morlich beach to find out what everyone else thinks FLS should be doing in Glenmore.

Discussions also need to start on asset transfer possibilities in the wider Loch Morlich area covering the whole of the loch and its immediate surrounding land. The recent fiasco surrounding the FLS tendering process for the camp site (see here) suggests that FLS need to be relieved of their responsibilities over quite a wide area of land at Glenmore. Much of this land would be far better managed if primary responsibility was transferred to the Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust, backed up by CNPA oversight and supported by the experience and financial resources of Wildland Limited. That is what was planned for the camp site until FLS took leave of their senses.
FLS should retain responsibility for fire control measures and associated forestry management activities over the more remote parts of Glenmore, away from Loch Morlich.

In an article in the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald (29 June) the Highland and Islands Greens MSP, Ariane Burgess, described a recent visit to see the damage caused by the large fire at Corriemony nature reserve to the west of Inverness where new planting, ground vegetation and some timber were destroyed. But she also notes “how resilient nature can be. There was a clear line where the fire stopped when it reached the mature trees, which had thicker bark and more moisture”, adding that when new woodland is being created the trees need to be “given time to grow and establish themselves”.

This provides a clear lesson for Glenmore where there is far too much plantation forestry, carried out long ago by the Forestry Commission. This has degraded one of Scotland’s finest ancient Caledonian Forests whose historic  remnants were established and replenished by natural regeneration over thousands of years, all the way back to the last Ice Age. These plantations need to be felled asap along with the more recent planting by FLS at the west end of Loch Morlich. FLS need to be told that restoration of this forest should be entirely by natural regeneration, to meet both biodiversity and climate change requirements, as well as the need to provide a future forest structure that is far more resilient to wildfire damage than the current forest.

Meanwhile the CNPA needs to take a much closer look at fire risk more generally in the northern Cairngorms and ask, for example, why Rothiemurchus estate continues to carry out muirburn  in Glen Einich (see here), for grouse, on land adjacent to the Glenmore Caledonian Forest. Surely the risk of this regular burning getting out of control is much greater than a fire spreading from a barbecue in the middle of a sandy beach by Loch Morlich?