Yesterday afternoon the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) further reduced the overall area covered by their unlawful exclusion zone in Glenmore (see here) and (here). Once again there was no news release to announce the changes although the day before the CNPA had issued a news release about King Charles’ visits to An Lochan Uaine at…
The following is a short summary of a draft report that I have prepared for my colleagues in Badenoch Climate Action to facilitate discussion about the origins of the Cairngorms wildfire in July/August 2026, its suppression and future considerations. Given the national and international reputation of the Cairngorms for wildlife, scenery and outdoor recreation, the…
The section of dual carriage way on the A9 between Dalmamein and Dalnaspidal, just south of Drumochter, was opened in November 1979. The woodland along it is highlighted in Lesley Riddoch’s film, “Scotland’s Missing Forests: the Great Eco-Conspiracy” (see here). That film, which has had over 200,000 views, focuses on the restorative tree planting by…
On Friday the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) reduced the size of Abernethy/Glenmore the “Exclusion Zone” it had created in Glenmore/Abernethy. There is nothing I can find to announce the change on its website, apart from the changes in the map shown on its path closures webpage (see here) and nothing on its Facebook Page. …
Driving up the A82 in mid-July, before going to the Alps, I was surprised to see that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s works to ‘upgrade’ the Falls of Falloch car park, announced earlier this year and which I had blogged about in April (see here), were complete. Very few of the…
Todrig was once, as the photo of the main house shows, a wealthy hill farm in the Borders whose more recent decline is part of a decline in sheep farming more generally. It was acquired by Gresham House Forest Growth and Sustainability Fund LP (GH Fund) in 2022, in which the Scottish National Investment Bank…
In September 2021, the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) announced it had committed £50m of taxpayer funds into Gresham House Forest Growth and Sustainability LP (Limited Partnership) as a ‘cornerstone investment’. The SNIB claimed 1.2 million tonnes of carbon would be sequestered over 20 years, with environmental benefits for biodiversity and ‘new jobs’ (see here)….
The extent of the Abernethy – Glenmore wildfire has been mapped (HERE). In QGIS a grid of 100 m sided cells was overlain over the fire boundary polygon, and clipped to match the boundary. The mean altitude within each cell was calculated using the Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model, downloaded via the OpenTopography website. This…
After my post yesterday questioning the legality and justification of the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s ‘Exclusion Zone’ on Tuesday (see here), a reader sent me a photo of this sign at Inverdruie. I do not know who is responsible for the wording but there is no mention of any Exclusion Zone. That and the “welcome”…
[This is an even more belated post card from the Triglav National Park (see here) and will be the last in the series – some observations from the Austrian side of the Carnic Alps will follow]. We ended our traverse around the core mountain area of the Triglav National Park at the Vrsic pass. In…
The creation of access rights under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 did not remove restrictions on access made under other legislation. Some of those legal restrictions apply to land more or less permanently, such as those applying to working quarries, but some are more temporary. For example, under the Fire and Rescue Services Act…
I went to have a look at the southern edge of the area affected by the Abernethy/Glenmore wildfire on 23rd August, about five weeks after the fire started and two weeks after Glenmore had been re-opened on 7th August (see here for timeline from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service). All the photos in this…
A late postcard – I am back in Scotland! The most obvious impact of global warming in the Alps has been the retreat of the glaciers. At the end of the 19th Century the glacier on Triglav covered over 40 hectares. By 2019 it had shrunk to 1 ha and by 2022 was no longer…
I had wanted to climb Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia, ever since meeting some Slovenian climbers on a Mountaineering Council of Scotland meet many years ago. My interest was fanned by Mike Newbury, a stalwart of MCifS’ access and conservation committee, who went on holiday to Slovenia each year and whose privately published guide…
UPDATE (24th August) Copernicus satellite imagery flown on 21/08/2026 gives a cloud free view of the north-east corner of the area burnt in Abernethy Forest. I have therefore been able to revise the maps of the Abernethy – Glenmore wildfire, and have added updated maps to the Google Drive folder (link in blog…
Walking up through the forest to our first hut below Debela Pec we had little idea if it’s extent until altitude started to stunt tree growth. Prompted by the Glenmore fire and Victor Clements post (see here) I wondered what would happen if a wildfire became established in a forest of this size and if it…
An RSPB newsletter I read before leaving Scotland for Slovenia, referred to capercaillie as birds of the Caledonian pine forest. This may now be the case in Scotland but wasn’t always so, as when capercaillie inhabited the mixed woodland on the Loch Lomond islands. Capercaillie, while mainly found in the boreal zone, are also distributed…
My original plan for this summer was to start walking the Via Alpina, which traverses the arc if the Alps from Trieste to Nice or thereabouts. The first part through Slovenia, however, did not sound that much fun so I decided to spend a week instead wandering through the Triglav National Park. Having skirted the…
A previous article on this (see here) created a significant level of interest and useful feedback, including from BBC Rado Scotland Drivetime and Radio 4 researchers. The message from the post above was that the pinewoods will grow back. The recovery may not be uniform, and there may well be areas of contraction or wider…
I was prompted to start Parkswatchscotland as a means of combatting the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s proposals to create camping byelaws. Having been involved, as President of the Mountaineering Scotland, in negotiating the agreement which was eventually enshrined in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 I believed there other ways to…
This very short post is concerned with pinewood recovery after wildfire, and based around a 10 minute video shot in the Forest of Birse on Deeside, 23 years after a big fire there in 2003. The video can be found viewed here. The context is the big fires taking place at Glenmore Forest and Abernethy…
A month before large areas in Strath Nethy and Glenmore were consumed by fire, I went for a short walk to have a look at part of the Caledonian pinewood around Glen Brown which also lies within the Cairngorms National Park. This fragment of Caledonian pinewood is located on the Dorback Estate, which was purchased…
UPDATE 25/07/2026 08.30 This blog was written on Thursday 23rd July, when fire flare ups were first being reported. Police Scotland declared a major incident on the evening of the 24th, with residents of Nethybridge evacuated as a precaution. The current extent of the fire is unclear. There is (currently) no public access to the Glenmore…
Walking back from Cook’s Cairn and Corryhabbie Hill in mid-June, I spotted shoeless hoof prints in Glen Suie and then a tepee and two horses in a field by the nearby estate bothy. I went over to have a look and got chatting to a woman minding the camp. She was with two companions and…
[NB This post was updated and corrected at 18.50 on 19th July. I wrongly reported the local resident as having seen smoke at 11am on Weds 15th about 45 mins before the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service were alerted to the fire when he had seen smoke in that area the day before. It was…