Royal hypocrisy
“It is a source of great pride to me that the leading role my husband played in encouraging people to protect our fragile planet, lives on through the work of our eldest son Charles and his eldest son William. I could not be more proud of them.” (Queen’s Speech to COP26 reception for world leaders see here)
Muirburn and high deer numbers on Balmoral are what have prevented the Ballochbuie Caledonian Pine forest remnant from expanding and recovering its natural range. As a Special Area of Conservation it is supposedly one of Scotland’s most protected sites for nature but it’s been in unfavourable condition for years.
Most of site condition reports on Ballochbuie on NatureScot’s sitelink website are now well out of date (see here) but below is a summary of the current position by Bell Ingram (see here) on the South Deeside and Angus Glens Deer Management Group website:
While otters and “plants in crevices”, which are protected from grazing and burning, may be in favourable condition, the woodland and bog habitats are not. They are the key to absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and restoration of the natural environment – the two key issues which COP 26 needed to address. The Royal Family has continued to manage most of their land at Balmoral for sporting purposes rather than “our fragile planet” and this has undermined the very purpose of the Cairngorms National Park, one of the few places in Scotland where conservation is supposed to come first. The Royal Family’s management of their land is one of the reasons the capercaillie is effectively extinct on Deeside. It is also why so much of the rest of the Cairngorms National Park is in such a poor state: where royals lead, lackeys follow.
Where is the royal leadership in the Cairngorms?
“It is the hope of many that the legacy of this summit – written in history books yet to be printed – will describe you as the leaders who did not pass up the opportunity; and that you answered the call of those future generations. That you left this conference as a community of nations with a determination, a desire, and a plan, to address the impact of climate change; and to recognise that the time for words has now moved to the time for action.” (Queen’s speech to COP).
“Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how devastating a global cross border threat can be. Climate change and biodiversity loss are no different. In fact, they pose an even greater existential threat to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war like footing.” (Prince Charles’ address to COP summit 1st November see here)
The Royal Family have been very happy to lecture others on leadership and tell people in other parts of the world what they should be doing, but they have carried on managing their land regardless. At the same time they have failed to speak out about the destructive ways that neighbouring sporting estates have been managing their land.
Yesterday, prior to their conference in Perth this weekend, Revive, the coalition for grouse moor reform, issued a short video on how landowners were raising two fingers to COP:
(Click on Watch on You Tube to view – there is excellent coverage on Raptor Persecution UK (see here)). The fires were apparently on the Edinglassie and Allargue estates. These are located just across the River Don from Prince Charles’ estate at Delnamph.
If you look on google earth, the muirburn on the Abergeldie Estate, which forms an enclave within the Balmoral Estate and is now up for sale for £23m (see here) is even worse. Where is the appeal from the Royal Family that this should stop and the land should now be bought for conservation purposes?
And then there is the Caenlochan Special Area of Conservation, a small part of which lies within the Balmoral Estate, which as Dave Morris has highlighted Balmoral and the recommendations of the Deer Working Group is probably the worst example of the failure to tackle the deer issue in the whole of Scotland. Where has the royal lead been these last 20 years?
The Royal Family have actually been actively influencing land-management on Deeside for some time but unfortunately its not been in the cause of conservation. Prince Charles has close links with Salvesen family, who donated £4m to the National Trust for Scotland through the Easter Trust to purchase the Mar Lodge Estate, but on condition that sporting use should continue. That in a nutshell is why natural regeneration and the recovery on the Mar Lodge Estate is ten years behind Glen Feshie. Its taken a massive effort by staff working on the estate to get agreement from the land-owner dominated NTS that muirburn should stop (see here) and that deer numbers on the “regeneration” part of the estate should be reduced. During this period, I have heard that Prince Charles has met with NTS bosses and expressed the view that these positive changes are incompatible with continued “sporting use” on the estate. If that is wrong, perhaps Prince Charles should go public about what he has actually discussed with NTS.
Prince Charles is unfortunately locked into the traditional culture of sporting estates. He should go and take a look at Glen Feshie, where deer stalking and walked up grouse shooting continue but in a far more “sporting” manner than the sitting deer ducks and driven grouse on Balmoral.
The Royal Family and the Cairngorms National Park
Five years ago I blogged about the damaging land management practices of the Royal Family at Balmoral and the opportunity that the then new National Park Partnership Plan, out for consultation, offered for change (see here). Nothing has changed since then. Moreover, if you want to understand why the targets for net zero, woodland restoration and peatland restoration in the latest National Park Partnership Plan which I blogged about yesterday (see here) are so weak, you need look no further than Balmoral.
As an illustration of the power of the Royal Family and other large landowners, Objective A7 of the NPPP is that “Carbon and biodiversity plans are in place for farms across the National Park by 2028″. And so there should be, give the climate and nature emergencies, but there is NO such objective for the large landowners who own the sporting estates! Nor is there any commitment to improve financial transparency about the amount of pubic subsidy that continues to be directed towards estates.
The creation of the Cairngorms National Park in 2003 has done nothing to change the way the Royal Family have managed their land at Balmoral or Prince Charles’ estate at Delnadamph. Rather its the opposite. Its been the Royal Family who have been main determinant of what the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) is able to do. This explains why all the major conservation successes in the National Park (Cairngorms Connect, Mar Lodge etc) are not due to the CNPA but are down to conservation owners who are prepared to ignore or challenge the way sporting estates are being managed.
What can be done?
The speeches by the Queen and Prince Charles to COP, however, do present an opportunity to hold the Royal Family to account for what they are doing in the Cairngorms National Park. It’s wonderful how more people are now speaking out about how the Royal Family are mismanaging their vast landholdings not just in Scotland but elsewhere (see here). If the Royal Family continue to fail to act on their own advice they will lose all credibility. And that in turn could create a constitutional crisis. Why would Scotland want a king who fails to practice what he preaches in public and fails to show a lead on his own land?
The CNPA’s consultation on their new National Park Partnership Plan (NPPP) presents an opportunity to register publicly an objection to how the Royal Family are managing their land in the Cairngorms. There is an online interactive map (see here) for people with an interest in the Cairngorms to “pin” comments to particular places or areas:
Estate boundaries are not shown on the map and nor is the name Delnadamph soI have added this to the map above below the comment I submitted. I suggest that if you don’t know the estate boundaries for Balmoral you pin your comment above the castle (just above where I have added Balmoral to the snapshot). Here the comments I have made:
Balmoral
Delnadamph
As an alternative to adding your own comment, you can agree with comments that have already been submitted. There are quite a few critical comments about damaging land-management practices across the National Park which are worth looking at and supporting and I would also encourage people to add comments about issues in the areas they know.
The old ‘do as I say, don’t do as I do’
In some ways the royals can claim to be above us minions but when it comes to the environment and the world in which we all live, they should be leading by example.
Hypocritical royals lecturing others while continuing their environmental plunder. Their carbon footprint as extravagant as their funded lifestyles. The queen herself guilty of meddling in Scottish affairs to dodge her estates’ environmental obligations. Get rid of this anachronistic bunch of planet wreckers.
How can we possibly criticise countries who tolerate illegally clearing land by burning when we condone the practice of muir burn over huge swathes of Scotland. OK, so it isn’t the Amazon but for the host country for COP26 to be allowing the release of all this sequestered CO2 is incomprehensible. The resulting environmental damage as well as the pollution experienced by those living and working nearby is unforgivable. And for what; the utterly trivial pursuit of shooting one species of bird to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. The Queen and the heir to the throne should be held accountable for their role in this.
The Royal Family, let’s face it, live in a ‘bubble’ along with their servants! They have no idea about what is going on in the Highlands, in general, or in the Balmoral estate, in particular.
Prince Charles and his family carry on the tradition of Grouse-shooting to the detriment of the moors.
Pheasnts and partridges are still reared and released in vast numbers, affecting the flora and fauna.
I was in Glenisla recently and was aware of the plethora of released pheasants, sometimes preventing my progress as I drove further up the glen. When I was younger, I don’t remember there’s being so many at that time. Now they are bred in captivity for the cruel sport that wealthy shooters take part in.
I hope that one day, after Scotland wins independence, this barbaric sport is banned for ever, sheep are removed from the land and cows re-introduced to ‘care’ for the land, so that native trees are allowed to flourish again and thus help birds like the capercaillie to multiply again.
Scotland could be doing so much more right now. I do not see the implied link with Scottish independence. We have the powers to tackle these issues now, but the opportunities are being squandered. Currently, the Scottish Government is moving at a snail’s pace on acting on the Wherrity report. We are a year in from Mairi Gougeon’s minimalistic response to the Wherrity report, and virtually nothing has changed. NatureScot is stilling on its hands and doing nothing and we have the CNPA cosing up to the so-called sporting estates, including the Royal family’s estates. Yet again CNPA has failed to take any leadership role and set a real vision for a National Park to be a leader in biodiversity and reducing the massive negative human impact on the ecology and the environment in general across our National Park. The considerable advances made by Cairngorms Connect are just not enough. The CNPA and NatureScot should be dragging our out of touch Scottish Government into setting the successes of Cairngorms Connect as a vision of the way forward for large parts of our upland areas.
Another good post. As someone who lived on Abergeldie for a short time and used the area around Balmoral to access Lochnagar and it’s neighbouring hills I saw the royals out grouse shooting quite a lot. It is simply the case that they prioritise traditional sporting activity over conservation every time, despite what pronouncements are made about climate and biodiversity. If this where not the case we would have seen major changes on the estate decades ago.
I hope the indignation in this piece is purely environmental and not political? The wholesale rewilding of Scottish moorland is surely a subject for debate, not dogma. Well managed grouse moors are positive places for wildlife – especially waders, particularly Curlews. The RSPB statistics confirm this. Rogue moors should be punished as all law breakers are, but shooting as a whole is a valuable employer on otherwise uneconomic land.
I carry no particular candle for the Royal family, but when I read criticism based on the absence of Capercaillie on Deeside, I sense acute bias: how many Capers are breeding in the RSPB Abernethy Reserve?
I am sure this is an unpopular post, but I wish there was a forum for a non-polarised debate on Scottish outdoor issues. All sides – environmentalists, fishermen, shooting people – have much to contribute, and all love Scotland whether they support independence or not.
David, in my view you cannot be environmental without being political. The politics of this is where the Royal Families lead other landowners follow, ie their management is key to the Cairngorms National Park achieving its statutory objectives. I would be delighted if the Royal Family were to declare that they intended to change Balmoral and Delnadamph from sporting estates into Nature Reserves. But meantime if you can name me a well managed grouse moor in the National Park I will do some background research, go and take some photos if I don’t have them already and we can carry on the debate. Regards, Nick
Interested that the first responder here introduces the old emotion ‘canard’ ..the totally undefined and unquantifiable “Love of Scotland” . One has only to look at antique photographs taken at any time over the past 150 years, to see how highland landscapes have been trashed, while post war subsidy for drainage and riparian development to contain water courses have modified so many glens over the 5 generations since the camera was invented. Back in the early days the higher moors were accessed only on foot. Horses and mules were used to reach these higher places, and for heavier transport. Even just 70 years ago wheeled vehicles would never have been tolerated. ( The urgent postwar need to replant forests excused widespread ploughing for post WW2 forestry. This mindset did open a pandora’s box of ‘sin’. The initial level of damage has been exploited to the huge detriment of wild places ever since. Modern man seldom looks back that far, but their elders would tell them, if they bothered to actually listen.
Today land management practices may have modernised use of manpower. Yet, there is nothing except individual laziness that prevents shooters walking to the butts. Game keepers might still use horses and drags to remove game as their forebears did. Helicopters are now incredibly versatile, use elsewhere for single tree timber extraction, to position fencing materials, not just for entertainment companies. Rethinking current practices would undoubtedly incur greater expense for management than now.
So.. to demonstrate a true “Love of Scotland” what price tag is acceptable.? Pleasing a few rich visitors for a few days entertainment each year is clearly no answer when the tens of thousands, who also thronged the highlands with full wallets this past summer, are barely tolerated, even despised by too many land owners . The unstoppable ATV , the use of wheeled and tracked machinery off farmed areas, in places where there has never ever been any real need for such machines to be at all, has no redeeming “Love of Scotland” excuse. It is unjustifiable.