Regular readers may or may not be surprised to hear that having helped pay to cover Balquhidder in plastic in March 2022 (see here), the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority got itself onto the shortlist for the Nature of Scotland awards on 22nd November:
They didn’t win. These corporate backslapping exercises currently serve to endorse some terrible conservation practice and fool many decent people that they are doing the right thing.
The truth is that trees reproduced for millions of years before tree tubes became standard practice in the UK, that the plastics industry is an integral part of the oil industry and thus helping to drive climate change and plastic is extremely polluting to the natural environment. The main promoters of the Nature of Scotland awards, NatureScot and the RSPB, should be taking a lead on this but instead gave the Nature and Climate Action Award to One Million Trees who still use plastic tree tubes (see here).
In future NatureScot and RSPB should make it clear they will not entertain any planting project that uses plastic tree tubes.
Having criticised the MInister responsible for National Parks, Lorna Slater, for posing by a plastic tree tube in 2022 The green way to plant trees? What hope for our National Parks? it was very good to see that she now appears to understand that deer are the problem:
That speech was not just a one-off, she gave the same message at the recent Revive Conference in Perth.
Perhaps Lorna Slater could ask the CEO’s of both the LLTNPA and NatureScot, for which she is also responsible, what they have done to reduce grazing pressure in Balquhidder and elsewhere in Scotland so riverine woodland can regenerate naturally?
The LLTNPA had also put itself up for the Nature and Climate Action Award with “Mission Zero in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs” (see here) ,a reference to its vacuous National Park Partnership Plan. Thankfully they didn’t win that award either but Lorna Slater could do worse than tell them to replace all the meaningless guff in the plan with a commitment to reduce deer numbers to 2 per square kilometre or less. That would be the best thing the LLTNPA could do for both nature and climate and would help make plastic tree tubes history.
Last weekend I was in Glen Isla. Beavers have found their way right up there.
It was a sorry sight to see several fair sized trees, so carefully established as saplings to create a riverside woodland on a disused open field 20 years ago, now chewed, ring-barked and dying. To counter this attack -which he is powerless under law to resist on his personal property – the owner has resorted to securing lengths of old carpet around the lower vulnerable sections of the trees he paid for so long ago. (This stuff deters the beavers apparently.)
What a truly wonderful consequence for the natural environment? Perhaps it would have been better for the ecology of Scotland had the property owner never attempted any tree planting along this section of that river at all.?
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10160436855523113&set=gm.1320484338672351&idorvanity=536104087110384
I notice you have not mentioned anything about the article above from the Glen Falloch estate about the peat saving project. I don’t think I have ever seen one positive post from yourself. All we get is moan moan !!
Hi Alistair, I am in favour of repairing damaged peatbogs so thanks for bringing this to my attention. Do you know if Glen Falloch has reduced grazing levels, eg
Well…these jokers are under every stone in the land. The salmon are now in the middle of a catastrophic extinction event and it’s been too little to late from these show boaters. A long story short. Trotsky was a heretic anti-communist, counter-revolutionary and a Nazi collaborator. Between him/his and the Frankfurt School, German academics who fled to the US, they informed what’s called “Western or Cultural Marxism”…a dog’s dinner that informed the “left” and the “right,” neo-conservatives, globalists, imperialists and anti-communists. (Doctored versions of this on Wikipedia say it’s a “conspiracy theory.” It’s not but it’s not the full story.) Nazis, more anti-communists, were co-opted and re-purposed after WW2. They’ve re-surfaced in Ukraine. Karl Popper and George Soros were both Nazi anti-communists. Soros got his “Open Society” from Popper, the Tories’ “Big Society.” They’ve empowered and funded vast global networks of NGOs, think tanks, media outfits, charities, trusts and foundations. These are Popper’s “civil society institutions.” The institutions of power and control had to be devolved from the centre to provide a “civilising influence” throughout the The State, to fortify capitalism and stop the spread of communism. Andrew Wallace, of the Association of Salmon Fisheries Boards, started the Scottish fishery trusts/foundations 1980’s, Thatcher Gov, on the Tweed and Dumfries and Galloway. Now they cover the whole of Scotland. Whether their projects work or not the landed interests have reinforced and consolidated their power and control and they have added value to the market value of their properties…when wild salmon stocks were declining since 1970’s. Labour rubber stamped all of that because these NGOs have “a public or community service remit.” But that’s one sided and undemocratic. They’re constituted private bodies with their own terms and conditions and responsibilities. The public/communities have no power or control over them. They’re Popper/Soros anti-communist cops on the beat. Now there are grounds to “horseshoe” Nazis and communists as if they were equal…when the communists and socialists are fake. But not Marxist-Leninists. Stalin coined that. He defeated the Nazis WW2. The Communist Party of Britain are Trots…who scab and sheep dog for Labour/Unions. They’re gatekeepers and accomplices before the fact to the Popper/Soros “civil society institutions” of the ruling class. It’s no wonder there’s so many “green” and LGBT Nazis. Adolf’s still giving the orders from the grave. But the Trots/”Western Marxists” are tailing the influence of Popper/Soros by a long way. Popper/Soros front colour revolutions, regime change operations, shape wars and NATO Springs. The money talks, but not if you haven’t got the bus fare to Balloch.
…and now there are Nazi, anti-communist beavers coming over here from Germany, coppicing our riparian woodlands and unwittingly causing Marxist biodiversity, so that the neoliberal capitalists can catch more salmon on their days off. Where will it all end?
I’ve read that Nazi Popper Soros thing twice now. I have no idea what it is getting at…
Re beavers… you do understand how coppicing works?