I have been out and about quite a bit over the last month and its got me thinking about run of river hydro schemes again, from both a climate change and a nature perspective. While promoted by both Scottish Government policy and developers as a means of providing renewable energy and of reducing our carbon…
Highland Council has decided not to approve the application (see here)) for a telecoms mast under the Shared Rural Network programme on Creag Dhubh, west of Newtonmore. This is not the first mast to be rejected by a planning authority (Perth and Kinross Council recently rejected one north of the west end of Loch Rannoch)…
One evening three weeks ago I went up Ladylea Hill at the northern end of the Candacraig Estate. While the predominant land use in most of the upper catchment of the River Don is intensive grouse moor management, much of Candacraig has been used for commercial forestry for some time and the main “sporting use”…
Fourteen years ago, in 2010, the head keeper at Mar Lodge quit his employment with the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) claiming “deer numbers had fallen to dangerously low levels” on the estate (see here). His claims were not just poppycock, as this photo shows, they were a deliberate attempt to sabotage NTS’s effort to…
On 22nd November the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) issued a news release announcing it was investing £1.6m of Scottish Government funds in its facilities over the winter in order for it to become a “net zero” organisation by 2030. The bulk of the money was earmarked for “retrofitting” the LLTNPA’s HQ…
In 1995 the Mar Lodge Estate was bought by the National Trust for Scotland with a £10m+ grant from the Heritage Lottery Fun and a £4.5m grant from the Easter Trust. In 1996 NTS agreed with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) set of principles by which the estate should be managed including that the remnants of…
On 24th April councillors at West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) decided by a majority vote to accept the recommendation of officers (see here for the committee report and proposed response) and not object to the Flamingo Land planning application at Balloch. This was a reversal of the previous position WDC Councillors had adopted when, in June…
The 1996 Deer Act created a new duty for NatureScot, the body responsible for the control of deer in Scotland, to take account of “the size and density of the deer population”. The Report of the Scottish Government’s Deer Working Group, published in 2020 (see here), recommended that NatureScot “should adopt 10 red deer per…
On 5th April (see here), in the newsletter they email to land managers, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) reported that their National Park Partnership Plan (NPPP) 2024-29 had been approved by Scottish Ministers. There is no mention of this on the “news” section of their website (last item International Women’s Day…
The failed Cononish goldmine & the failures of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority
This post provides a summary of some recent evidence that has emerged about the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s mis-management of the crisis at the mine and some related financial developments. The “regular updates” given to LLTNPA Board Members about Cononish goldmine The Chief Executive’s report to the LLTNPA Board Meeting…
On 18th December a planning application (see here) was submitted to Highland Council on behalf of Akre Ltd for retrospective planning permission for works they had undertaken relating to the Far Ralia hill road, confirmation that the law had been flouted as I claimed last June (see here). The application form suggests the works started…
This post takes another look (see here) and (here) at the planning application to build an enormous pump storage hydro scheme between Loch Leambhain, facing Ben Alder, and Lochan na H-Earba. The Scottish Government’s unaccountable Energy Consents Unit Generally it is harder to find documents relating to planning application on the Energy Consents Unit (ECU)…
GB TTIt is over three years since parkwatch published a letter from Alistair Bell in Canada about HIE’s corporate gaslighting at Cairn Gorm and why people had allowed downhill skiing there to die (see here). There have of course been several campaigns against HIE before, successful in the case of the opposition to extend downhill…
On 6th March “Lomond Banks”, the brand name Flamingo Land uses at Balloch, issued a news release (copy here) announcing it had finalised a Section 48 agreement [under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984] with Transport Scotland under which it would pay for an upgrade to the Stoneymollan roundabout on the A82 should its planning application be…
I was pleased to have this letter, full text below, published in the Herald on Tuesday. I hope it speaks for itself: “Your front page report on Saturday (Rural communities ‘at risk’ in phone network switch 13th April see here) shows the UK Government’s approach to telecommunications provision in rural areas, a Westminster responsibility, is…
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…