The risk to Nick’s proposal to suspend the Scottish Forestry Grants system for a year (see here) is that you destroy the woodland creation capacity we currently have, including tree nurseries, and in a way that we never get it back again. No-one will ever trust the Scottish Government again and they won’t invest in…
Category: Other parts Scotland
Having been investigating for some time the way in which Scotland’s forestry grants have been used to destroy nature and release carbon into the atmosphere in the Cairngorms National Park, I did not foresee the whole system would start to implode in the Borders. What is happening at Stobo Hope, on the north side of…
David’s Jarman’s post (see here) on the destructive impacts of the proposed Lochan na h-Earba pumped storage hydro (PSH) scheme and the fate awaiting Scotland’s landscape, natural environment and cultural heritage appears to have struck a cord. Many people who strongly support the need to reduce carbon emissions and recognise that we need to store…
Importance of the pinewoods. Forestry policy, private and public landowners and deer management will be under scrutiny next week at the native pinewoods conference in Fort William (28/29 Oct see here). This post examines what needs to happen to save our ancient Caledonian pinewoods and who might lead the way. The future of our Caledonian…
This is a fuller version of a story in Scottish Mountaineer this autumn, which takes its cue from the long-running “New Twists for Old Hills” series there. The literal ‘shafting’ is the driving of miles of tunnels through the Ardverikie Munros, linking hugely enlarged lochs for a Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) scheme known simply and…
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…
No corrie will be safe, no classic Munro round will remain sacrosanct, if they approve “Earba”. This is the developers’ secretive codename for a mega-pumped storage hydro scheme (PSH) which is with the equally secretive Energy Consents Unit to fast-track under some barely-accountable Energy Minister’s pen in amongst a sheaf of routine death warrants for…
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…
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…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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…
[Ed note. While I wrote about the proposed mast on Creag Dubh in a previous post (see here), this objection to the Planning Application from Dave Morris sets out a reasoned and detailed case about what is wrong with the Shared Rural Network programme and the approach they are taking to fixing the “partial…
[Ed’s note. This post complements the points David made in the excellent article by Vicky Allan in the Sunday Herald at the weekend: “£1m per mast. So who will benefit from costly new Highland phone lines?” (see here)]. The Shared Rural Network (SRN) was launched in 2020 to improve 4G mobile coverage in rural areas…
It occurred to me that those of us who speak out against phone masts in Wild Land areas [Ed. see previous posts in this series] need to get out the fact that there are alternatives to mobile phones – not just coming alternatives, but here-and-now alternatives, some of which have been around for decades. The…
On 5th February a planning application was published on Highland Council Planning portal to erect a 27.5m high telecommunications mast along with 2 x 15m wind turbines and 36 solar panels in the heart of BrewDog’s Lost Forest (see here). While the application states “the proposed site is located towards the foot of Creag Shollier,…
It took five FOI requests, but this week I finally managed to get Grid References for the masts the UK Government plans to build for the Shared Rural Network srn.org.uk. These are plotted above on the Wild Land areas designated by NatureScot nature.scot/doc/wild-land Wild Land is of course uninhabited, with no public roads or premises….
Gaming the holes in Scotland’s planning system Yesterday I was notified by Highland Council that the planning application (Ref 23/04957/FUL) for a telecommunications mast and 2.4km of track in the Wild Land Area at the eastern end of Loch Mullardoch had been withdrawn. A small bit of good news. Highland Council has already withdrawn all…
Parkswatch has already featured the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme, and some instances of its potential impact (see here), (here) and (here). Some digging (mostly by others) reveals that the potential impact of the SRN scheme is much bigger and much worse that many people previously thought. To recap, the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme is…
Restoring Scotland’s natural woodland cover and biodiversity from centuries of over grazing is an urgent and necessary step towards sustainable management and care for our hills and mountains. Woodland regeneration could, within decades, extend throughout the uplands allowing a natural woodland mosaic to develop, increasing biodiversity while protecting and enhancing the terrestrial carbon cycles. The…