The Abergeldie Estate, which I referred to in my post on the Royal Family last week (see here), is now under offer. That is hardly surprising. There are plenty of billionaires in the world for whom forking out £23m to become neighbours of the Royal Family is small change. Whether the prospective buyer will be…
Tag: CNPA
Royal hypocrisy “It is a source of great pride to me that the leading role my husband played in encouraging people to protect our fragile planet, lives on through the work of our eldest son Charles and his eldest son William. I could not be more proud of them.” (Queen’s Speech to COP26 reception for…
There are lots of good aspirations in the draft Cairngorms National Park Partnership Plan (NPPP), which is out for public consultation until 17th December (see here), but at the heart of its plan for nature is an unambitious target for carbon emissions. The effect of this will be to allow unsustainable management of land to…
On 10th November 2018 a large landslide took place above the eastern end of Loch Quoich. It was triggered by the collapse of a crag halfway up the steep hillside, demolished an electricity pylon and resulted in the road to Kinloch Hourn being closed for 6 months while the slope was stabilised at an estimated…
What the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) have discovered at Mar Lodge While away in Lochaber last week I read a very interesting article in the latest Reforesting Scotland journal (Issue 64) on ‘Regenerating aspen: “spontaneous appearance” at Mar Lodge Estate’. The author, the ecologist Andrew Painting, recounts how in 2018, while undertaking fieldwork in…
Development for “sporting” purposes on the Pitmain and Glenbanchor estates in the Cairngorms National Park, albeit interspersed with some tokenistic conservation projects funded by our public authorities (see here), is relentless. On 8th October Highland Council validated a planning application (see here), submitted by Savills, to erect a 6m high lattice radio mast and equipment…
The Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust (AGCT) was formed in October 2017 “to seek community ownership of the Cairngorm Ski Area and Infrastructure, in order to ensure that it is more effectively managed for mountain visitors, employees, and the local and wider community”. That purpose was recorded at the end of the minutes of their…
In my posts (see here) and (here) criticising the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board for abandoning their decision-making role and allowing senior staff to take control, I was aware of a recent exception to the rule. At the Planning Committee on 30th August (see here for papers) Board Members rejected a recommendation…
This post takes a look at a recent attempt by Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)/Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) to defend their new but low standard and barely used campervan facility in Coire na Ciste at Cairn Gorm. [Update: for how HIE/CMSL responded to some of the issues raised in this post (see here)]. …
Following my post in June about capercaillie and fencing (see here), it is very good to see that the Cairngorms Capercaillie Project has been working with the Seafield Estate to replacing plastic netting on deer fences near Aviemore with wooden droppers. We should not be allowing plastic, whether in the form of netting or tree…
The National Park Partnership Plan is a five year plan which sets out the overarching framework for what happens in our National Parks, the contribution of the various public authorities involved and priorities for action. The current plan for the Cairngorms runs out in 2022 and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) is in the…
The Cairngorm National Park Planning Committee saw fit to grant Cairngorm Mountain [Scotland] Ltd (CMSL), Highland and Island Enterprise’s wholly owned subsidiary, permission to set up a Campervan Park in Coire na Ciste on Cairn Gorm. That consent was granted on 21 May 2021. CMSL indicated to the planning committee that they might be able…
On 19th August a firm called Caledonian Building Surveyors Ltd submitted a Screening Request (see here) to Highland Council on behalf of the Pitmain and Glenbanchor Estate Ltd. It asked if an Environmental Impact Assessment was required before they could upgrade and create new tracks and upgrade part of the public road up Glen Banchor…
This post takes a look at the implications of the co-operation agreement and shared policy programme that has been agreed between the SNP Government and the Greens (see here) for National Parks in Scotland. Investment in National and Regional Parks While the SNP said absolutely nothing about National Parks or Regional Parks in their election…
There are two good things to say about the publication two weeks ago of Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd (CMSL’s) accounts (see here) for the year ending 31st March. The first is that they were made public just four months after the end of the financial year, well before the nine month deadline for private companies. …
Following my two posts on BrewDog’s proposals to create a Lost Forest (see here) and (here) at Kinrara, plans for peat bog restoration on the estate appeared on Highland Council’s planning portal (see here). In April the Scottish Government issued new planning guidance on Permitted Development Rights (see here) which required peat bog restoration schemes…
Watching the torrential rain showers in Glasgow over the last ten days, I have been wondering about what impact they have been having in hills, both in our National Parks and more widely. Erosion is a natural process but the impact of increased heavy rainfall due to climate change on eroded slopes such as that…
A ding-dong battle On Thursday an organisation called Rewilding Britain issued a news release (see see) highlighting the destructive impact of grouse moor management in national parks in the north of England and the Cairngorms and which urged: “ministers to show real leadership by creating wilder national parks and setting up core rewilding areas in…
This post looks at two further examples of the use of plastic tree tubes (see here and here), this time on the western side of the Cairngorms National Park, argues that their use is completely unjustified and it is time they were banned completely. The use of plastic tree tubes in the A9 dualling project…
I have stretched the meaning of the “Cairngorms” in this series of posts, half of which have featured land west of the A9, and I am going to stretch it even further in two posts which take a look at Brewdog’s proposals to create a “Lost Forest” on the Kinrara estate which they bought earlier…
A week after walking up by the Allt Fionndrigh off Glen Banchor to look at the extensive landslips there (see here), Dave Morris returned to look at the impacts red deer are having higher up the hill. He was surprised to find that the track, which had been completely covered by debris washed down by the…
Storms and construction work While my own walk round Cairn Gorm on my week in Speyside was affected by a heavy shower (see here) , I hate to think what might have happened had the torrential downpours which occurred in Grantown and Glen Banchor a few days before before (see here) had hit the mountain….
Rothiemurchus Estate has been split in two since it sold off the Caledonian Pine Forest in its middle section to Forestry Commission Scotland, as it then was, for £7.2m in 2016 (see here). The upper part, which extends to the head of Glen Einich, is sandwiched between the landholdings which have formed Cairngorms Connect and…
Late last Friday afternoon I went for a walk up Glen Banchor and over Creag Liath, via the track by the Allt Fionndrigh. The track featured on Parkswatch 18 months ago due to the Glen Banchor and Pitmain estate’s plans to extend it for the purposes of grouse moor management (see here). All the ground…
Following my post on the failed restoration of the Beauly Denny powerline access tracks (see here), someone asked on twitter “how would you have done this differently”? The answer lies just over the hill on the southern face of Carn Dearg Mor above Glen Feshie. There, Wild Land Ltd is in the process of removing…