Tag: CNPA

May 17, 2025 Graham Garfoot 2 comments

  On 2nd May Highlands and Islands Enterprise announced (see here) that having re-opened the funicular on 27/02/2025, after one and a half years of repair work, it would be closing it again on  12/05/2025 – just ten weeks later – for another three weeks until 2/06/25: “while the company’s in-house engineering team carries out…

May 16, 2025 Nick Kempe 5 comments

The caption reads “A solitary pine clings to the hillside in Coire na Ciste. A rare survivor in an otherwise treeless landscape”.  Propaganda credit Spey Catchment IniitiatveA month ago, on 15th April, the Spey Catchment Initiative (SCI), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), formed in December 2022 issued a news release announcing it was to…

April 28, 2025 Nick Kempe 2 comments

The Tinto Hills Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)  (see here) was not the only protected area to be destroyed by muirburn during the periods of high fire risk this Spring.  The muirburn triggered wild fire considered in this post took place in the glen running north from  Glenballoch in Glen Banchor which has previously…

March 27, 2025 Nick Kempe 6 comments

In November David Craig explained how advances in smart phone technology meant that any masts erected under the UK Government’s Shared Rural Network programme  to eliminate Total Not Spots would soon become obsolete (see here).  On 25th March Ofcom issued a set of proposals for consultation which would remove the regulatory block to that happening…

March 24, 2025 Nick Kempe 9 comments

On 19th March the Herald revealed (see here) that Scottish Forestry, having suspended grant payments to BrewDog after it was revealed many of the trees in the Lost Forest had died, has now paid them £1.2m and agreed to pay a further £1.5m for the project.  This post takes another look at the scandal in the…

March 5, 2025 Nick Kempe 4 comments

Following my post yesterday on King Charles’ muirburn at Delnadamph (see here), I am very grateful to Jamie Mann, an investigative journalist at the Ferret, for alerting me to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) database (see here).  FIRMS records satellite observations of fires, however caused,  across the world.  Satellite technology now has…

February 28, 2025 Nick Kempe 1 comment

Yesterday with almost no notice the funicular at last re-opened. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, in a news release issued on Wednesday (see here) claimed that “all safety-critical matters have now been concluded” – not exactly the same thing as stating all the safety concerns that caused them to close the funicular in August 2023 have been…

February 21, 2025 Nick Kempe 7 comments

With little sign of the Scottish Government implementing the provisions of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 and while the Cairngorms were aflame from muirburn (see here), the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) Board on 14th February approved new fire management byelaws and a draft “Integrated Wildfire Management Plan” for consultation with land…

February 17, 2025 Nick Kempe 19 comments

Driving north up the A9 on Saturday Andy Cloquet observed muirburn on five sites between Dalwhinnie and Newtonmore with “an acrid smell over five miles of road” and sent parkswatch these two photos. The ostensible purpose of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 (“the Act”), which was passed by the Scottish Government last…

November 15, 2024 Nick Kempe 3 comments

It is now five months since my post questioning how abrdn, Akre and the Natural History Museum  (NHM) had applied the Biodiversity Intactness Index to the land at Far Ralia in an attempt to demonstrate that the careless and destructive tree planting there would result in an almost miraculous improvement in nature (see here and…