James Stuart, the convener of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA), has to step down in February having been on the board for eight years. At the LLTNPA Board Meeting on Monday Heather Reid – the former broadcaster known to many as Heather the Weather – was elected to replace him. That…
Category: National Parks
The title of the Scottish Government’s consultation, “Wildlife Management in Scotland” (see here), which closed yesterday, was very revealing. Despite the nature emergency and the Scottish Government’s commitment to protect 30% of the land by 2030 (see here), there were no questions about how natural processes could be restored or we might reverse the catastrophic…
NatureScot’s consultation on National Parks closes today. In my view the most important section of the online survey (see here) is about the powers and functions of National Parks (questions 13-16). Get this right and there would be no need to resort to “green” finance as the means to address the undoubted problems in our…
After the first three questions in NatureScot consultation on National Parks, which are about whether to turn them into vehicles for “green finance” (see here), the fourth is about the role of local communities (see here). The introductory text to the section claims that our National Parks “provide exemplars of community engagement” but contain no…
Following the poorly designed consultation on creating a new National Park for Scotland which took place May-June (see here), the Scottish Government asked NatureScot, its statutory adviser on such issues, to provide advice on the role of National Parks and “how new nominations for National Parks could be evaluated”. In the summer NatureScot set up…
As I mentioned in my recent post on greenwashing (see here), James Stuart, the soon to depart convener of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, was in July appointed by UK Government Ministers to the Lakes District National Park Authority. On the LDNPA website (see here) Board Members are portrayed as “the voice…
#netzerowithnature is a hashtag now being frequently used by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) but is also “the collective strategy of the National Parks in the fight against climate change and the biodiversity crisis” (see here). The LLTNPA newsletter went on to say: Last year, in the continued fall-out from…
Urgent representations need to be made to members of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to stop the sale of Kinloch Castle and its grounds to an England based multimillionaire, Jeremy Hosking. The government body, NatureScot, who own most of Rum and manage it as a National Nature Reserve, aim to sell the castle…
The recent heavy rain in Scotland reminded me that I had intended to write about what happens to the precipitation that does fall in the mountains of western Europe, how land-use and abuse has worsened the impact of reduced rainfall and how this helps explain why there were so few flowers during my traverse of…
It was scorchingly hot when I started out on the Haute Route across the Pyrenees (see here) but it took me time to appreciate the impact this was having on the vegetation in the mountains. Almost all the flowers had gone, whether the land was grazed or not. Having not been to the Basque country before,…
Following my last post on the impact of the river hydro schemes in Glen Etive (see here), I have been sent photos of the work taking place to construct the Allt Chaorainn, the first scheme you encounter when coming down the glen, together with some commentary (in italics to distinguish it from my own). “I…
When I stumbled across an unburied hydro pipeline in the Lakes recently (see here) it got me thinking about whether it might not be far less destructive and better for the landscape and natural environment if we left hydro pipelines above the ground. I could not help comparing that scheme in the Lakes to what…
A day after the initial consultation (see here) about creating a new National Park in Scotland closed, there was a Scottish Government sponsored debate in the Scottish Parliament on the issue, introduced by the responsible junior Minister, Green MSP Lorna Slater. (You can view the proceeedings here or read the official report here). While there…
A couple of hours after after my encounter with a young peregrine on Sunday (see here), I came across a run of river hydro scheme along Wounddale beck north east of Ambleside. What caught my eye was that the pipeline between the intake and the powerhouse had been left above ground: My initial reaction was…
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…
[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…
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 am just back from a week ski touring in the Dolomites, a holiday delayed for two years because of Covid. I was last in the area four and a half years ago, after which I wrote a number of posts comparing land and tourism management in the Dolomites, which was declared a World Heritage…
I have been spending a few days in the Lake District National Park where the use of plastic tree tubes appears even more widespread than in Scotland’s National Parks. A short walk up Raven Crag, above Thirlmere, provides a good illustration of the stupidity of what is going on. (As an aside, everywhere you walk…
John Sinclair sent parkswatch more photos of the Allt Charnan two days ago. The water is not as cloudy as it was last month, when it featured in my post on the environmental damage that is being caused by the construction of the seven hydro schemes in Glen Etive (see here): But two days ago…
I have not blogged about the Glen Etive hydro schemes since preliminary construction work started two years ago (see here). I am afraid I have kept away. I was very pleased, therefore, but also extremely concerned to be sent these recent photos of the Allt Charnan by John Sinclair, a local resident. What you can…