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…
Tag: CNPA
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…
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…
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…
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…
In 1995 the Mar Lodge Estate was bought by the National Trust for Scotland with a £10m+ grant from the Heritage Lottery Fun and a £4.5m grant from the Easter Trust. In 1996 NTS agreed with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) set of principles by which the estate should be managed including that the remnants of…
The 1996 Deer Act created a new duty for NatureScot, the body responsible for the control of deer in Scotland, to take account of “the size and density of the deer population”. The Report of the Scottish Government’s Deer Working Group, published in 2020 (see here), recommended that NatureScot “should adopt 10 red deer per…
On 18th December a planning application (see here) was submitted to Highland Council on behalf of Akre Ltd for retrospective planning permission for works they had undertaken relating to the Far Ralia hill road, confirmation that the law had been flouted as I claimed last June (see here). The application form suggests the works started…
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 am very grateful to all the people who have promoted my post on Sunday (see here) about Scottish Forestry and the tree planting disaster at Kinrara and my apologies that the parkswatch website then crashed. This does not appear to have been due to a cyber attack by defenders of the forestry grants system or…
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…
The funicular may have been non-operational and much of the other uplift removed but provision for snowsports at Cairn Gorm this winter was much worse than it should have been given the amount of snow making equipment Highlands and Islands Enterprise had bought for its subsidiary Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd (CMSL). The screenshots in this…
On Thursday the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill (WMMB) (see here for text) was passed by the Scottish Parliament. Judging from the responses of some of the main proponents and opponents of the Bill one could be fooled into thinking will usher in major changes to how grouse moors are managed. On the one hand…
The funicular, HIE’s crumbling empire at Cairn Gorm and the need to reform Scotland’s National Parks
The current position ” Risks associated with reinstatement of the Cairngorm funicular railway were addressed through robust internal and external governance and project management” (HIE Annual Report 2022-23 as laid before the Scottish Government in October). There was no public news release but last week Highlands and Islands Enterprise let it be known through the…
It is over 18 months since I explained why the Scottish Government needed to review how Scotland’s two existing National Parks have done before creating a new one (see here). Instead of doing that the Scottish Government has been pressing ahead with the creation of a new National Park but using a new process to…
Deer fencing and stock fencing generally serve very different purposes, the former is used to keep deer out, the latter to keep sheep and cattle in. While I have covered the disastrous consequences of deer fencing quite often on parkswatch, most recently in relation to the case of BrewDog’s Lost Forest and its impact on…
Following my post on deer fencing and capercaillie on Speyside (see here), a friend and sometime contributor to Parkswatch, Nick Halls, brought to my attention to the latest issue of the Geographer, the magazine of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. It is all about trees. In it there is an interview with Thomas MacDonell who…
On 20th October Highland Council validated a planning application (see here or ref 23/04700/FUL) to erect a 25m high telecommunications mast high on Creag Dubh between Newtonmore and Laggan. Since Creag Dubh is protected as a Site of Scientific Interest the mast requires full planning permission and Highland Council has the power to reject it….