Following Storm Barbet (see here) Brechin and other settlements located by rivers which flow south and east out of the Cairngorms have TV once again been affected by flooding. People from Brechin whose property has been wrecked have been moved into hotels and describe what they have been through in the last three months as…
Month: December 2023
(A) The steel strengthening brackets This picture shows the three different types of bracket used in the strengthening works. I have labelled these:- Type 1. The bracket in the foreground (used in the central section of the “I” beam Type 2. The brackets around the insitu block either side of the number 23 Type…
Last week I went out at Balmaha, the first time for over a year, and was greeted by a new forest of tree tubes. It looks terrible, is terrible for nature and ,this post argues, it exemplifies what is wrong with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) and its new National Park…
I had not attended a Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) board meeting in person since before the Covid lockdown but on 11th December once again took the train to Balloch. Having just written a post on The fundamentally useless National Park Authority and its useless National Park plan it was very decent…
The Balloch and Haldane Community Council, who resigned en masse after backing the Flamingo Land development, is back up and running again with new people. That is a very good thing for the local community and Parkswatch is pleased to support their work by featuring this article by Lynne Somerville, their vice-chairperson, which is also…
Restoring Scotland’s natural woodland cover and biodiversity from centuries of over grazing is an urgent and necessary step towards sustainable management and care for our hills and mountains. Woodland regeneration could, within decades, extend throughout the uplands allowing a natural woodland mosaic to develop, increasing biodiversity while protecting and enhancing the terrestrial carbon cycles. The…
The publication date of the April Monitoring report of the Cononish goldmine is given on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)as 26th October (see here), four days before the Planning Committee Meeting on 30th October (see here) which considered and then “noted” the “annual report” on the mine. There was absolutely no…
The funicular railway on Cairn Gorm was returned to service in late January 2023 after having been closed for repairs since October 2018. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) committed >£26m to the work that it had deemed a better option for the future of the CairnGorm Mountain business than removing it. The eye watering final…
The Scottish Government’s consultation on Tackling the Nature Emergency (see here) closed on Thursday. It is yet another consultation that will have consumed vast amounts of time and energy but is unlikely to change much. This post considers some of the key reasons why the Scottish Government’s proposals for nature restoration won’t work. A second…
byOn Monday objectors to the proposal to build a telecommunications mast in the heart of Torridon (see here) were informed the application has been withdrawn. A small but significant victory which shows that the roll-out UK Government’s Shared Rural Network programme is far from a foregone conclusion. There had been 92 comments from the public…
After my post on Concrete and the Death of a Ski Resort (see here) the following comment was posted which I think deserves a proper reply. Environmental change Significant human intervention began at Cairn Gorm when skiers first arrived and decided it was the best place to build a ski area, a resort that has…
By happy timing, John Urquhart’s agenda article for the Herald on the end of funding for the A82/A83 litter bins and loos (which might be easier to read here) appeared two days before the meeting on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) on Monday. There is nothing in the papers for…
This post takes another digression from National Parks to consider what this crushed house says about the failure of the planning system to respond appropriately to the risks posed by climate change. It took a couple of days but the national tabloids have picked up on the story, first featured in the P & J…
The Scottish Government’s consultation on “Tackling the Nature Emergency: Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity” (see here), which was launched in September and includes proposals to reform Scotland’s National Parks, closes on 14th December. To date I have only considered the Scottish Government’s undemocratic proposal to increase Ministerial control over appointments to National Park board appointments…
Rather like with telecommunications masts (see here), a number of organisations have come together to try and persuade Historic and Environment Scotland (HES) to re-open the Radical Road in Edinburgh which was closed after rockfall in September 2018. After a series of meetings with HES in 2022, the organisations were given the impression that the…
In a recent post on the proposed telecommunications mast at the western end of Loch Mullardoch (see here), I criticised the organisations which have rightly formed a coalition agains the Shared Rural Network programme for not campaigning hard enough to protect Scotland’s finest wild land from descretation. Those organisations – I am a member of…
Having written fairly extensively about the impact of grazing on landslips, earlier this week I was alerted that sheep had got into the new native wood plantation intended to help stabilise the slopes above the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful. I contacted Nick Halls, a contributor to Parkswatch, who by chance was returning…