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…
Category: Cairngorms
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…
While efforts to contain the Glen More wildfire continue (see here) and have had some impact, it now appears likely only rain will extinguish it. In the last year the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has approved fire byelaws, intended to reduce the likelihood of wildfires happening, and what was described as a ‘pioneering’ Integrated…
A couple of weeks ago Dave Morris and myself met with Mike Gifford, the Chief Executive, and two of the new directors of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) at their invitation. Among the subjects we discussed were the proposed mountain coaster, which CMSL has called a toboggan run, but in fact has nothing to do…
Two years ago I briefly considered the implications of invasive Sitka for native woodland on Ladylea Hill, in the north east corner of the Cairngorms National Park (see here). This week I spent three days hill walking in and around Glen Livet, in the central part of the northern Cairngorms. I had not spent time…
Eleven months after the largest wildfire ever recorded in the British Isles burned large parts of Dava Moor, hare’s tail cotton grass has expanded to cover much of the exposed peat. Out of destruction a scene of beauty! Carbon emissions from peatland are estimated to add c3.5% to the UK total. Bare peat, some of…
The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) takes a very different to measuring the carbon stored in soils and the carbon stored in wood. As my first post in this series explained (see here), the WCC calculator reduces the multiple different types of soil to just two categories, mineral and organo-mineral, and almost completely disregards the evidence…
The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) describes itself (see here) as ‘the UK’s government-backed standard for creating new woodlands that generate high-integrity carbon credits’ and is managed by Scottish Forestry. The WCC is based on a number of key assumptions which are not explicitly stated: the first is that since trees take CO2 out of the…
Following my post on the proposed mountain coaster/toboggan run at Cairn Gorm (see here), I have been invited to meet Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) along with Gordon Bulloch and Dave Morris who gave evidence to the Public Audit Committee with me about the funicular in January (see here). I have taken the opportunity to…
After my post about how the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) no longer provides emails to board members on grounds of national security (see here) a reader sent me a link (see here) about board members on the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA). The LDNPA, like the CNPA, has a new website but seems to…
Last Friday, the day of the Scottish Parliamentary election count, the appeal by the locally elected member for Balloch, Sid Perrie, against the decision of the Standards Commission for Scotland (SCS) to suspend him from the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) for six months for sending six emails (see here) was due…
Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)’s plans to build a mountain coaster, first proposed in 2018 and now described as a toboggan run, are now in the news (see here for example). A planning application was submitted to Highland Council on 2nd April and called-in by the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) on 27th April (see…
This post provides a follow-up to the uncontrolled fires I observed on Morar on 25th April (see here). The map shows that so far this year far more land has been burned in the east of Scotland than the west and that most of these fires have been on intensively managed grouse moors in the…
Fit adult red deer normally jump over stock fences such as this with ease but accidents happen and become more likely over the winter months as they weaken through lack of food. Part 3 of the recently passed Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2026 starts by setting out the aims and purposes of deer management. Two…
A few days after they had provided me with a copy of the contract for the Creag Bhalg woodland creation scheme near Kingussie (see here), Scottish Forestry responded to my complaint about the locked pedestrian gates there. After their Conservator for the Highlands and Islands, John Risby, had confirmed their contract with Balavil covered these…
Our National Park Authorities are unique among Scotland non-department public bodies (NDPDs) in that their boards are not wholly appointed by Scottish Ministers but some members are directly elected and others appointed by local authorities. That three-way division of power in theory makes Scotland’s two National Park Authorities accountable not just to the Scottish Government…
On 19th March I wrote to both Scottish Forestry and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) about the locked gates (see here) in the deer fencing around the Balavil Estate’s Creag Bhalg woodland creation scheme. I had asked Scottish Forestry for a copy of their contract with Balavil, which I received yesterday, and requested they withhold…
[This article originally appeared last year in Mountain Views, the excellent journal of the North East Mountain Trust. I am pleased to republish it, following my post on Seedy Sitka (see here), using some additional photos from other areas to illustrate the points Drennan makes] A walk up Bern Vrackie is a good day out…
Last week the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) issued a news release (see here) which started with the following statement: “Members of the Public are being advised not to use the following paths into Abernethy Forest from Glenmore and Nethy Bridge during early mornings (before 8.30am) over the next few weeks to avoid disturbing breeding capercaillie: Ryvoan…
Having burned late into the autumn last year, NASA Firms data base (see here) shows Scotland’s grouse moor owners and managers started burning again at the start of March. At the end of this last week the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) issued their first very high fire risk warning (see here) of the…
The woodland visible around the top of Creag Bheag was funded under the Woodland Grant Scheme 3 in 1999. Twenty years later the Balavil Estate engaged Trees for Life Woodland Services to design a new area of native woodland on the estate, around Creag Bhalg. This is about 3 km north east of Kingussie, was…