Following the local member elections on Thursday, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) issued a news release with some brief biographical details about the successful candidates (see here). You can read the full results here. The LLTNPA news release announced that turnout was 31% across the National Park but did not…
Author: Nick Kempe
As the UK Government and possibly the British state continues to unravel, today is local member election day for the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA). Back in May, when I wrote a series of blogs on democracy in the National Park (see here, here and here), I had hoped the parkswatch could play…
Last month it was reported that Brewdog had been awarded over £1m in grants by Scottish Forestry Scotland as part of its Lost Forest project at Kinrara. The Scottish Forestry website is very hard to use – searches for Brewdog, Kinrara and on its land based database all come up blank – and I have…
Just two months after Forestry England (FE) and Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) bought back the Camping in The Forest (CiCF) business from the Camping and Caravanning Club (see here), all 16 campsites are all being outsourced again. FLS is currently advertising 15 year leases, through a company called CDLH, for Cobleland in the Trossachs,…
This map shows the extent of Flamingo Land’s proposed development at Balloch, now being marketed as Lomond Banks. The area outlined in red shows the area included in the current application for planning permission in principle, that in blue other land “within the control of the applicant” which includes a large part of Drumkinnon Woods. …
Following my post in March about Highland and Island Enterprise (HIE)’s proposal to build mountain bike tracks at Cairngorm (see here), parkswatch has not considered the matter further. Meantime the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) considered and approved the application (see here) at the end of May. I did not watch the planning committee meeting and…
I had been wanting to take a look at SSE’s “trial restoration areas” for the Beauly Denny powerline at Drumochter for several years and eventually managed to do so on Friday. Unlike the landscape scar immediately south of Balsporran Cottages and north Drumochter Lodge (see here), which is clearly visible as one travels through the…
When I stumbled across an unburied hydro pipeline in the Lakes recently (see here) it got me thinking about whether it might not be far less destructive and better for the landscape and natural environment if we left hydro pipelines above the ground. I could not help comparing that scheme in the Lakes to what…
Following my post (see here) on the new planning application from Flamingo Land to develop much of the Riverside and Woodbank sites at Balloch, opposition to their revised proposals appears to be growing. The debate in the Scottish Parliament Yesterday, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament, sponsored and led by Green MSP Ross…
[After publishing this post I was sent a couple of photos by Dave Morris, who had just spent a night in a campervan parked next door to a beaver lodge and the habitat they had created. Duncan Halley, a Scot resident in Norway helped facilitate the translocation of beavers for the Knapdale re-introduction]. At their…
A day after the initial consultation (see here) about creating a new National Park in Scotland closed, there was a Scottish Government sponsored debate in the Scottish Parliament on the issue, introduced by the responsible junior Minister, Green MSP Lorna Slater. (You can view the proceeedings here or read the official report here). While there…
A couple of hours after after my encounter with a young peregrine on Sunday (see here), I came across a run of river hydro scheme along Wounddale beck north east of Ambleside. What caught my eye was that the pipeline between the intake and the powerhouse had been left above ground: My initial reaction was…
Yesterday, running off Ill Bell on the Kentmere horseshoe my daughter glimpsed a raptor landing just to her left and stopped. I was 10m behind and would have missed it. A chance in a life time. We watched the peregrine while it occasionally preened. It was unconcerned by our presence and I wondered at first…
I had been wanting to visit Glen Etive to take a look at the seven hydro schemes being constructed there since John Sinclair, a local resident, had alerted me to the environmental damage that was being caused before Xmas (see here & here) This post takes a look at the landscape impact of the hydro access…
Yesterday the Scottish Government issued a news release (see here) announcing that Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities and two National Parks were being allocated £6.5m from the Scottish Government’s £65m fund to restore nature over the next four years. The news release was accompanied by two photos of Lorna Slater, the Green MSP and Minister for…
The Scottish Government’s request for “ideas” about a new National Park in Scotland (see here) closes today. So far, 93 ideas have been registered (see here) among which I can find almost no mention of the destructive impacts of overgrazing by red deer on the natural environment. Yet if the Scottish Government wants National Parks…
Galloway is one of the areas most likely to be selected as Scotland’s third National Park (see here) due to high levels of support locally. That support has been driven by concerns about the increasing encroachment of windfarms, the intensification of agriculture in the coastal areas and the impact of commercial forestry plantations, all of…
When you see bizarre claims on a sign once they are easy to dismiss as the product of a landowner’s fevered mind. This, however, is the second sign I have come across in the last year that claims “red culls” are carried out “By Order of the Scottish Government”. (Apologies I cannot recall the location…
Yesterday the revised planning application from Flamingo Land to develop Balloch was published on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) planning portal (see here). The main differences to the planning application that was submitted in 2018 and then withdrawn in September 2019, just before the LLTNPA was due to consider it, is…
[Apologies, I made an error in my explanation of the law below and have updated this post. A full understanding of Board membership requires interpretation of the 2000 Parks Act, which is less than clear in this area, and incorporation of the separate designation orders and modification orders for the two Parks] Under the National…
I have spent several days in the last couple of years in and around the Phoines Estate and, while not blogging about the estate itself, have included photos of way they manage the land in posts about muirburn madness (see here) and the politics of muirburn in the National Park (showing the state of the…
Last month, in a great piece of investigative journalism (see here), Rob Edwards from the Ferret obtained a copy of a document called the “Salisbury Crags Rock Risk Management Options Appraisal 2021” from Historic Environment Scotland (HES). This revealed that HES are seriously considering trying to close the Radical Road in Edinburgh permanently. Although I,…
On Thursday, the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Minister, the Green MSP Lorna Slater, who also has responsibility for National Parks, launched a consultation (see here for news release) on creating a third National Park in Scotland. It is to credit of the Greens that they have forced the Scottish Government to reverse their longstanding opposition to…
I have not blogged about the destruction caused by the Beauly Denny powerline construction since last July (see here). But each time I cross the Drumochter the scars left by SSE (formerly Scottish and Southern Electricity) appear just as bad and I have been meaning to go back and take a closer look at how…
Who can stand? Following my post Democracy and voting systems – the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park local member elections I was pleased to see earlier this week that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) amended the erroneous information they had posted on their website which suggested only local residents could…