Yesterday Raptor Persecution UK reported that a peregrine had been found shot in Glen Esk, around Tarfside (see here). This follows the osprey that a gamekeeper found shot on the inglorious 12th of August in nearby Glen Doll (see here). Both locations are in the northern part of the Angus Glens and lie within the…
Category: Cairngorms
28th Septembermarks the first anniversary of the closure of the Cononish goldmine (see here). This was they way when Scotgold announced that the vast majority of its staff were being put on short-term unpaid leave, The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s mine monitoring reports, published with their usual secrecy six months in…
Keir Starmer has been widely reported over the last couple of days in the UK media as being likely to say in a speech today that “things will get worse before they get better” (see here). Whatever the truth of this statement as applied to the economy as a whole, it is certainly not the…
On Tuesday, 20th August, I and other objectors received this letter by email notifying us that the planning application for this 25m high telecommunications mast in the Glenmore Forest had been withdrawn. As usual, the description of the proposed development tells you little, but this is the “repeater” mast whose only purpose was to enable…
I have not visited Far Ralia, the land in the Cairngorms National Park Abrdn’s Property Income Trust (APIT) bought for £7.5m three years ago and has now put on the market for £12m, since January. I have, however, recently obtained a copy of an inspection Scottish Forestry (SF) conducted in June through a freedom of…
In May, in a welcome move, Highland Councillors rejected the recommendation of their officers to approve a 25m high telecommunications mast on the south facing slopes of Creag Dubh, above the A86 between Laggan and Newtonmore, and refused planning permission on the grounds that: “This proposed installation of a telecommunications mast is considered contrary to…
At the end of June an article in the Strathy (see here) alerted the public to Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL)’s latest planning application for Cairn Gorm, “playtime”. While Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) planning staff called in the application for raising “issues of significance to the collective aims of the National Park it has…
Mobile phone operator Three’s Planning Application for a 22.5m telecommunication mast 400m from Ryvoan bothy, ostensibly intended to provide mobile coverage for the big four operators in the “Total Not Spot” between there and Glenmore, is generating just the sort of criticism needed to scupper the whole disastrous Shared Rural Network (SRN) programme. Besides over…
On 10th July Mitie, acting on behalf of Three, who are working for Digital Mobile Spectrum Ltd, who report to the Big Four mobile operators which include Three submitted a planning application to erect a 22.5m telecommunications mast by Ryvoan bothy (see here for planning papers). A week earlier David Craig explained on parkswatch (see…
The basic elements of the the scandal concerning abrdn’s proposed sale the Far Ralia estate in the Cairngorms National Park are very simple. Having bought the land now known as the Far Ralia estate for a reported £7.5m in September 2021, Abrdn are now trying to dispose of it for £12m having in the intervening…
After first hearing about the native woodland scheme at Muckrach I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Scottish Forestry (SF) for its contract with Calthorpe Estates, the family trust which owns the land, and any reports from inspection visits. Just like when the BrewDog Lost Forest disaster become apparent (see here), it turns out…
Following my post on the disastrous new section of road at Muckrach (see here), the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) informed me that they weren’t aware of the work but were now looking into it. I then heard from another source that the CNPA were due to meet with Savills, who oversaw the whole Muckrach…
On election day, 4th July, after the anaemic campaigns of the major parties, it was good to see some real politics being given prominence in the Herald and to be reminded of the time when the Scottish Parliament was prepared to introduce radical new laws. The royal family, the Scottish establishment and access rights…
When James Watt, sometime chief executive of the beer company BrewDog, speaks about tree planting in the Highlands, he reminds me of unpleasant landowners of the past. In his latest attempt at defending BrewDog’s disastrous planting efforts on their Kinrara estate near Aviemore in the Cairngorms National Park, Watt did not mince his words when…
Despite a huge budget, hubris threatens to make the Shared Rural Network (SRN) a wasted opportunity for rural communities with inadequate mobile coverage. Without bothering to ask communities what was needed, the SRN set itself this target: To bring 4G coverage, from at least one operator, to 95%of UK land area. To achieve this area…
On 28th June Raptor Persecution UK published a press release from Police Scotland appealing for information after a goshawk nest near Loch Gynack on the Pitmain Estate had been abandoned, apparently after a shot gun attack (see here). While no-one has yet been charged, this post will argue this was an “incident” waiting to happen…
After its initial consultation at the end of last year on its plans for the Angus Glens, including Glen Prosen (see here) and Glen Doll, Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) have produced a “concept proposal” prior to producing a Land Management Plan. They are consulting on until 30th June (see here for documents and video)….
A few weeks ago I was alerted by a Parkswatch reader to an excellent post on facebook (see here) about the Muckrach’s new forest, which the estate describes as one the largest “landscape scale projects” in the UK (see here). On my way up north 10 days ago I decided to go and have a…
Besides operating as a museum, the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London promotes itself (see here) as having “world-class expertise” and being able to help tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today.” When it came to native woodland that certainly used to be the case, as anyone will know who has read Richard…
Following my last post on deer density (see here), which was prompted by the 200+ deer I had seen on the Quoich flats on 3rd May and which took a theoretical look at what 10, 8 or 6 deer per square km means for the natural environment, this post relates those arguments to what is…
Last Monday, I walked back down Glen Affric from Allt Beithe Youth Hostel and then over to Loch Mullardoch. On the short stretch of public road between the car park and the turn north into Gleann nam Fiadh we passed this lorry with a large metal section of pipe. I guessed at once why it…
Answering MPs, who asked whether Total Not Spot (TNS) masts in uninhabited Wild Land are value for money, the CEO of Building Digital UK recently told the UK Public Account Committee: “…once you know where those sites are, each of the clusters as they go through planning will have to have a business plan …to…
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…