I am very grateful to all the people who have promoted my post on Sunday (see here) about Scottish Forestry and the tree planting disaster at Kinrara and my apologies that the parkswatch website then crashed. This does not appear to have been due to a cyber attack by defenders of the forestry grants system or…
In mid-February (see here) I described how many of the trees planted by BrewDog, as part of the Phase I creation of its Lost Forest, had died and how they appeared to be investing little, if any, of their own money in the whole disastrous project. A week after the post I received a response…
The funicular may have been non-operational and much of the other uplift removed but provision for snowsports at Cairn Gorm this winter was much worse than it should have been given the amount of snow making equipment Highlands and Islands Enterprise had bought for its subsidiary Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd (CMSL). The screenshots in this…
This post take a look at the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s handling of three recent planning applications and the anomalies therein following Nick Kempe’s post earlier in the week about Inchconnachan (see here). More on Inchconnachan island I attended the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) Planning & Access…
Question: how does France (along with many other European countries) manage to have so much more woodland than Scotland and “do” forestry without fencing and planting? Answer: they control grazing by large herbivores, whether livestock or deer, using completely different legal mechanisms than exist in Scotland The fundamental failing with the legislative proposals in the…
On 16th March 2024 Prior Notification of the intention to erect a 25m high telcommunications mast east of Corrour Lodge was published on the Highland Council Planning Portal (24_00979 TPNO see here). The proposal does not require full planning permission, even though it is close to the heart of the third most extensive Wild Land…
On Friday Planning Democracy published a post (see here) on whether National Planning Framework 4 had made any difference to the degree of protection that is given to nature under Scotland’s planning system as it was supposed to do. This followed an event at the Scottish Parliament, sponsored by Green MSP Ariane Burgess, and the…
The Scottish Government’s consultation on proposals to modernise the legislation which governs deer management in Scotland closes today (see here). There is a survey which is relatively easy to complete. The primary aim of the proposed legislation is to ‘ensure it is fit for purpose in the context of the biodiversity and climate crises’. The…
Following many months of speculation, the long-trailed Earba pumped storage hydro scheme proposed by Gilkes Energy for Ardverikie Estate is now the subject of a formal planning application on the Scottish Government’s Energy Consent Unit (ECU) website. Since it was first proposed, the installed capacity of the Earba scheme has doubled from 900 MW to…
On the evening of 28th February, HIE’s fully owned subsidiary Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) announced it was moving to a five day week and would not be operating on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This decision was met with disbelief by snowsports enthusiasts, particularly those who had bought season tickets, but also affected CMSL’s ability…
On Thursday the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill (WMMB) (see here for text) was passed by the Scottish Parliament. Judging from the responses of some of the main proponents and opponents of the Bill one could be fooled into thinking will usher in major changes to how grouse moors are managed. On the one hand…
In mid-February a small part of tailings stack 2 had been covered in matting. An FOI response from SEPA revealed that the LLTNPA had in December required the whole of the stack to be covered by 13th February to stop sediment entering the river system.(My apologies for lack of formatting etc in this post. It’s…
[Ed note. While I wrote about the proposed mast on Creag Dubh in a previous post (see here), this objection to the Planning Application from Dave Morris sets out a reasoned and detailed case about what is wrong with the Shared Rural Network programme and the approach they are taking to fixing the “partial…
Never, when writing my post HIE’s crumbling empire on Wednesday (see here), did I guess that Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) would have confirmed my analysis within 24 hours with this admission that the one ski resort in Scotland with natural snow, high in the Ptarmigan bowl, was inaccessible due to the lack of uplift….
Following the post from Lynne Somerville of the Balloch and Haldane Community Council about the proposed Vale of Leven windfarm in December (see here), I am very pleased to be able to report that Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) staff recommended (see here) to their Planning Committee on Monday that they should…
The funicular, HIE’s crumbling empire at Cairn Gorm and the need to reform Scotland’s National Parks
The current position ” Risks associated with reinstatement of the Cairngorm funicular railway were addressed through robust internal and external governance and project management” (HIE Annual Report 2022-23 as laid before the Scottish Government in October). There was no public news release but last week Highlands and Islands Enterprise let it be known through the…
[Ed’s note. This post complements the points David made in the excellent article by Vicky Allan in the Sunday Herald at the weekend: “£1m per mast. So who will benefit from costly new Highland phone lines?” (see here)]. The Shared Rural Network (SRN) was launched in 2020 to improve 4G mobile coverage in rural areas…
On 24th November Pitcher Partners, a company based in Western Australia, were appointed administrators for Scotgold Resources and its subsidiaries which operate in Scotland, SGZ Cononish, which operates the Cononish goldmine and its exploratory company SGZ Grampian. Two weeks ago a reader pointed me to information about two meetings Pitcher Partners held with creditors of…
It is over 18 months since I explained why the Scottish Government needed to review how Scotland’s two existing National Parks have done before creating a new one (see here). Instead of doing that the Scottish Government has been pressing ahead with the creation of a new National Park but using a new process to…
It occurred to me that those of us who speak out against phone masts in Wild Land areas [Ed. see previous posts in this series] need to get out the fact that there are alternatives to mobile phones – not just coming alternatives, but here-and-now alternatives, some of which have been around for decades. The…
Conservation and the welfare of the public: the Wallabies and Fallow Deer on the Loch Lomond islands
In December the Planning Committee of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) unanimously approved the planning application by Mr and Mrs Young to build a luxury holiday lodge on Inchconnachan (see here for committee report). Initially the application had included a proposal, based on advice from NatureScot, to remove the wallabies from…
On 5th February a planning application was published on Highland Council Planning portal to erect a 27.5m high telecommunications mast along with 2 x 15m wind turbines and 36 solar panels in the heart of BrewDog’s Lost Forest (see here). While the application states “the proposed site is located towards the foot of Creag Shollier,…
How many of the trees planted at Kinrara last year have survived? After my posts in the autumn about the destruction being caused by BrewDog’s tree planting at Kinrara and how it has been releasing carbon into the atmosphere (see here) and (here), I heard through a third party that someone with professional expertise thought…
It took five FOI requests, but this week I finally managed to get Grid References for the masts the UK Government plans to build for the Shared Rural Network srn.org.uk. These are plotted above on the Wild Land areas designated by NatureScot nature.scot/doc/wild-land Wild Land is of course uninhabited, with no public roads or premises….
Ten days ago tree nurseries were in the news (see here) when Christie’s of Fochabers were quoted as claiming “We will have to burn millions of trees after cuts” as a result of the Scottish Government deciding to cut funding for tree planting by 44% to £45.4m next year. The BBC quoted Mr Christie, the…