Last Friday the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) Board rejected the planning application to construct a new road round Newtonmore that would have connected the Pitmain and Glen Banchor estates (see here). The video of the meeting is still on the internet, which is contrary to the usual practice of the CNPA but is a…
Tag: CNPA
My post on The bus service and parking capacity at Cairn Gorm (published on Saturday 22 April 2023) received a number of comments on parkswatch and on the Save the Ciste facebook page. Parkswatch is indebted to those who took the time to point out the difficulties and costs associated with the provision of a…
The Gynack flood alleviation channel was constructed in 2017 and started to erode away as soon as it was used before it was closed due to the risks of catastrophic failure (see here). Ostensibly designed to reduce flood risks in Kingussie by diverting some of the flow of the Allt Mhor into Loch Gynack, the…
[Update 3rd May: this map, which was contained in the Committee report was incorrect, it shows the 4.83km of proposed new track but the application extended west and included a new bridge over the Allt Chaorainn to the left of the Parking symbol]. The Planning Application for a new “forestry” road, which would connect the…
The snowsports season on Cairn Gorm came to an end on Sunday 16 April 2023. It wasn’t the best or worst of seasons, although the available parking capacity was exceeded on a number of occasions, particularly at mid-term in February. During the course of the mid-term holiday in February, CairnGorm Mountain Scotland Ltd found it…
This post takes a further look at what is going on at Far Ralia which was bought in September 2021 by the Standard Life Property and Investment Trust (SLIPIT), renamed the ABDN Property Income Trust last summer. The Wade bridge First, a little good news. The gate that featured in my post on the Far…
Footpaths and climate change Yesterday there was an interesting feature in the Herald magazine about Bob Brown, the National Trust for Scotland’s footpath manager, who has kept the faith and continues to repair paths by hand rather than doing so on the cheap by machine, often with poor consequences (see here). Coming a few days…
The results of the local member elections for the Cairngorms National Park Authority, which take place by post vote, were announced on Thursday 23rd March and confirm that the voting system in both our National Parks is in urgent need of reform (see here for the elections to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park…
On 1st February Gilkes Hydro announced proposals (see here) to create a new pumped storage hydro scheme on the Ardverikie Estate in a beautiful and unspoiled area: “At up to 900MW installed capacity and 33,000MWh stored energy, this will be the largest such project in the UK”. If constructed, the scheme would link Lochan…
I biked over to the River Dulnain two weeks ago not to search out unlawful access signs on the Dunachton Estate (see here) but to take a look at the forestry and a new native woodland scheme around An Suidhe. There is some lovely woodland surviving on the estate, even if none that I saw…
[Update. Apology for the reference to Standard Life in the headline. SL merged with Aberdeen Asset Management and are know known as ABDN although their Investment and Property Income Trust kept the old name till last year]. I have been watching the Standard Life Investments and Property Income Trust (SLIPIT)’s plans for the part of…
When Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) announced in November they had awarded the lease for the Glenmore campsite to Twinflower (see here), they said nothing about the leases for the two campsites in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. These had been advertised through CDLH at the same time after FLS had bought back…
On Monday I went for a bike ride on the Dunachton Estate with Dave Morris, a friend and fellow access campaigner. We rode from near Kincraig over to the River Dulnain and came across a number of advisory access signs, some good some bad, but one in particular really caught our notice. A new moorland…
Last week I had a bad week for various reasons. I not only misinterpreted some of the data about boating use on Loch Lomond (see here) but also a notification from the Cairngorms National Park Authority about the withdrawal of a track application close to Newtonmore. I mistakenly thought this applied to the revised track…
For the last few years the Herald has carried a full page feature about once a week on the climate emergency and nature crises. Every 4-6 weeks this involves NatureScot, the new brand name for what is legally still Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Sometimes these pieces are written by NatureScot – often under the name…
Anne Weir was “quite shocked to see a rather large gate across the road and deer fencing stretching across the hill on either side” on a walk up Geal Charn Mhòr via the Burma Road and sent these photos to parkswatch along with a couple of comments. Anne noted that that there was still lots…
Last weekend I was out for a run over the hills on the north side of Glen Luss, which I had not visited since before Covid. They have become increasingly popular, and rightly so, with paths at various stages of development on the most frequented routes. In most places this is not a problem but…
The Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Parks are part of the UK family of national parks. The experience gained in any one of these national parks may therefore be of relevance to other parks within the family and more generally as regards the enjoyment, management and protection of land and water in the…
This post provides an update to what I wrote in October on Forest and Land Scotland’s purchase of the Glen Prosen estate (see here). So far, Forest and Land Scotland has issued not a single news release https://forestryandland.gov.scot/news-releases about their purchase or their plans. Nor does it appear to have published any other information which…
The Scottish Gamekeepers Association has long argued ((see here) that muirburn helps prevent devastating wildfires when the truth is that it is muirburn that has devastated nature across large swathes of Scotland. The fact that Fire and Rescue Scotland has chosen to invest resources in teaching gamekeepers how to “safely apply fire” suggests that they…
On 20th December 2022, four and a half years after the Drumlean Case (see here), Lord Carloway and two other of Scotland’s most senior judges issued another judgement in the Court of Session (see here) which described access rights as “the right to roam”: “[1] The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 introduced new rights of…
Following on from my post on peat bog restoration in Glen Banchor (see here), in 2020/21 three new woodland enclosures were erected along the River Calder as part of a conservation project. It involved a fair amount of machinery, raw materials (including bags of cement just out of the photo) and materials for fencing. How…
Annotated woodland plan for Glen Banchor showing a) area of peatbog restoration b) three new woodland exclosures extending across the River Calder onto the Cluny Estate c) the approx position of the sporting pond. Map Credit Cawdor Forestry.The woodland management plan contained in the latest Planning Application to build a track around Newtonmore (see here)…
On Tuesday Raptor Persecution UK had an excellent guest blog from Bob Berzins about the persecution of raptors in the Peak District National Park (see here). This explained that part of the reason for the National Park Authority’s failure to address this illegal persecution is a lack of transparency and accountability to the public, particularly…
Writing in the magazine British Wildlife in August 2018 David Hetherington, ecologist with the Cairngorms National Park Authority, explained the importance of natural regeneration in expanding the existing remnants of the Old Caledonian pine forests in the Cairngorms. Natural regeneration is the key defining character of these forests, demonstrating that they are descended directly from…