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 The main differences to the planning application that was submitted in 2018 and then withdrawn in September 2019, just before the LLTNPA was due to consider it, is…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…
Following the end of the 2021/22 Snowsports season, Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL), the company owned and controlled by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, has reimposed mandatory parking charges for the Coire Cas car park. The only difference from before being that the charge has been increased by no less than 50%. Customers’ reaction can be…
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…
Last September I described how Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) released the Health and Safety file from the funicular construction nine months after I had requested it and how information within it undermined the official explanation to why the repairs to the funicular had been delayed (see here). With the recent revelations about how HIE…
It turns out that the financial disaster at Cairngorm is going to be even worse than Parkswatch predicted (see here). Not only are the funicular repair costs increasing but, as Martin Williams revealed in the Herald on Sunday 9 days ago (see here), there is no money to pay for this, let alone the annual…
The weekend before last, on a stravaig around the Mar Lodge Estate, we passed the Red House on the Geldie which is being renovated by the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA). While I am a long-standing member of the MBA, I don’t keep up with the work they are doing and had only heard about this…
Four years ago, I blogged both before (here) and after ( here) the last set of Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) local member elections, arguing there was an urgent need for their Board to consider how the election of local members could be made more democratic in future. Having followed every meeting…
Following the online protest organised by the Grampian Moorland Group against the National Park Partnership Plan (see here), Scotland’s “Regional Moorland Groups” have been putting a glossy leaflet through the door of every household in the Cairngorms National Park. The Moorland Groups are shadowy organisations (see here) that do not declare their membership so it…
[I started drafting this post a month ago before my unanticipated lay off (see here). It may no longer be news but what has happened has implications for the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority]. On 22nd March The Hunter Foundation (THF) wrote to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) (see…
It’s a while since I posted one of Adam Watson’s photos, contrasting then with now (see here), but I was reminded of this photo when starting out up Glen Ey late Friday afternoon. (It has featured on parkswatch before in a post by George Allan about the LINK hill tracks campaign (see here)). What you…
Parkswatch readers will know that the Allt Coire na Ciste bridge was taken out of service in March 2021. CairnGorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) cited winter storm damage as being the reason for its dilapidated and unsafe condition. There’s no doubt that there was storm damage caused during the preceding winter but the bridge had…
It’s been a difficult month for parkswatchscotland. I intended to have a bit of break when ski touring in the Dolomites (see here) but following that was responsible for looking after a child for two and a half week during which time our household all got Covid. That left me knackered and blogging was the…
Today the Grampian Moorland Group have been mounting an online protest (see here) against the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA)’s proposals to reduce the numbers of red deer in the National Park from around 11 to 5- 8 per square kilometre. The protest is backed by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) (see here) and Scottish…
On Tuesday NatureScot launched its new corporate plan 2022-26 (see here) under the guise of what it described as “an ambitious new plan for nature” (see here). The 16 page document commits NatureScot to delivering the Scottish Government’s recently adopted targets that 30% of Scotland’s lands and seas should be protected by 2030 and 10%…