Following my post on deer fencing and capercaillie on Speyside (see here), a friend and sometime contributor to Parkswatch, Nick Halls, brought to my attention to the latest issue of the Geographer, the magazine of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. It is all about trees. In it there is an interview with Thomas MacDonell who…
Author: Nick Kempe
On 20th October Highland Council validated a planning application (see here or ref 23/04700/FUL) to erect a 25m high telecommunications mast high on Creag Dubh between Newtonmore and Laggan. Since Creag Dubh is protected as a Site of Scientific Interest the mast requires full planning permission and Highland Council has the power to reject it….
Gaming the holes in Scotland’s planning system Yesterday I was notified by Highland Council that the planning application (Ref 23/04957/FUL) for a telecommunications mast and 2.4km of track in the Wild Land Area at the eastern end of Loch Mullardoch had been withdrawn. A small bit of good news. Highland Council has already withdrawn all…
It is just over a year since I explained how the Cairngorms National Park Authority has ignored the role of deer fencing in the decline of capercaillie (see here). While the causes of capercaillie and black grouse decline are complex – they include loss of habitat and climate change – the one thing that has…
Soon after suggesting that sporting estates managed for grouse pose the greater threat to access rights because of their concerted attempts to make people “keep to the path” (see here), I came across this salutary reminder that some deer stalking estates are still ignoring the Scottish Outdoor Access Code (SOAC). One of the primary meanings…
On Friday the following comment was submitted to my post on Access Rights and Grouse Moors (see here) “Without mammalian (mustelid and rodent) control there would be no ground nesting birds of any kind, grouse or otherwise.” Comment: This is plainly wrong. Ground nesting birds evolved along with mustelids and rodents long before any predator…
On 18th December two pairs of beavers were released on Speyside, one on the Rothiemurchus Estate and one on land belonging to Wildland Ltd (see here). This followed NatureScot’s identification of Speyside as one of the priority areas for translocation of beavers from the Tay and the decision of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA)…
Wildlife, however much depleted, is present everywhere. Consequently if wildlife was a reason to keep to tracks there would be no right to roam anywhere. And in my case I could not have attained my objective on Hogmanay, the trackless summit of Carn nan Tri-Tighearnan a few miles north of the Cairngorms National Park. The…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
Ostensibly the law governing public authorities in Scotland requires them to operate in an open and transparent manner. The Freedom of Information Act required public authorities to produce publication schemes, setting out what information they publish as a a matter of course (the idea being to reduce the need for formal requests for information), while…
Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd (CMSL) is Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)’s subsidiary that is responsible for operating the facilities at Cairn Gorm, including the funicular. Earlier this month saw the publication (see here) of its accounts for the year to 31st March 2023. They start with this statement signed by Peter Mearns on behalf the…
In the majority of National Parks across the world land is publicly owned but not in Scotland nor the wider UK. That might not matter so much if Scotland’s National Parks had real powers to control how land is used and traded but their current powers are limited. Just as importantly, neither the Loch Lomond…
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…