Last week this post appeared on the Facebook Callander Discussion Forum about overflowing litter bins in the town (see here). The comments which followed helped explain the reasons why the bins had not been emptied and what is likely to happen when the tourist season takes off: These problems are not new. After fairly extensive…
Month: March 2026
The person who sent parkswatch this photo was taken aback by the number of Sitka spruce they saw below the summit of Ben Vorlich, the Munro south of Loch Earn. Last month, while climbing on Beinn Dothaidh, near Bridge of Orchy, I passed a Sitka sapling on a ledge at over 900m (sorry no photo). …
The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 requires byelaws to be reviewed every ten years. Currently, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) is secretly preparing a review of the camping bye laws, which prompted the creation of this blog, prior to a public consultation later this year. The review should start with some…
Having burned late into the autumn last year, NASA Firms data base (see here) shows Scotland’s grouse moor owners and managers started burning again at the start of March. At the end of this last week the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) issued their first very high fire risk warning (see here) of the…
The woodland visible around the top of Creag Bheag was funded under the Woodland Grant Scheme 3 in 1999. Twenty years later the Balavil Estate engaged Trees for Life Woodland Services to design a new area of native woodland on the estate, around Creag Bhalg. This is about 3 km north east of Kingussie, was…
My most recent post on Abrdn’s mismanagement of the Far Ralia estate for carbon offsetting purposes (see here) included this photograph of a new stock fence erected alongside an old deer fence and across this gate making it unusable. I then notified the responsible manager at Abrdn, who was not aware the gate had been…
Last week Severin Carrell in the Guardian revealed that BrewDog had sold their “Lost Forest”, the Kinrara Estate, to Oxygen Conservation for £8.85m, £350k much more than the £8.5m they had paid for it five years previously (see here). This post considers some of the issues this raises including: why BrewDog sold the land for…
The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) Board meeting on Monday (9th March) considered a paper on the Standards Commission for Scotland (SCS) decision to suspend Sid Perrie, the locally elected member of Balloch, for six months for sending six emails (see here). Public bodies which come under the aegis of the…
Earlier this week in my post on how the National Lottery now appears to be picking up a significant proportion of funding for Scotland’s National Parks (see here), I stated that Sandy Bremner, Convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) had recently been appointed to the Scottish Committee of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. That…
On 1st April 2022 a new Land Register, the Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land (RCI), was created under The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016. Its intention was to cut through all the off-shore companies, trusts etc, which are often used to own and manage land, and enable the “real” owners and…
[This post was updated and corrected 6th March – see post on apologies to Sandy Bremner 6th March] The Scottish Government’s budget for 2026/27 included significant cuts for both the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) (see here for budget documents). Over the course of two…
I had set aside last Wednesday morning to attend the Standards Commission for Scotland (SCS) hearing into Councillor Fiona Higgins, who like Sid Perrie (see here) the local elected National Park board member for Balloch, has been investigated by the Ethical Standards Commissioner for trying to raise concerns about officials. I was tipped off on…