I had wanted to climb Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia, ever since meeting some Slovenian climbers on a Mountaineering Council of Scotland meet many years ago. My interest was fanned by Mike Newbury, a stalwart of MCifS’ access and conservation committee, who went on holiday to Slovenia each year and whose privately published guide…
Tag: conservation
An RSPB newsletter I read before leaving Scotland for Slovenia, referred to capercaillie as birds of the Caledonian pine forest. This may now be the case in Scotland but wasn’t always so, as when capercaillie inhabited the mixed woodland on the Loch Lomond islands. Capercaillie, while mainly found in the boreal zone, are also distributed…
A previous article on this (see here) created a significant level of interest and useful feedback, including from BBC Rado Scotland Drivetime and Radio 4 researchers. The message from the post above was that the pinewoods will grow back. The recovery may not be uniform, and there may well be areas of contraction or wider…
This very short post is concerned with pinewood recovery after wildfire, and based around a 10 minute video shot in the Forest of Birse on Deeside, 23 years after a big fire there in 2003. The video can be found viewed here. The context is the big fires taking place at Glenmore Forest and Abernethy…
UPDATE 25/07/2026 08.30 This blog was written on Thursday 23rd July, when fire flare ups were first being reported. Police Scotland declared a major incident on the evening of the 24th, with residents of Nethybridge evacuated as a precaution. The current extent of the fire is unclear. There is (currently) no public access to the Glenmore…
While efforts to contain the Glen More wildfire continue (see here) and have had some impact, it now appears likely only rain will extinguish it. In the last year the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has approved fire byelaws, intended to reduce the likelihood of wildfires happening, and what was described as a ‘pioneering’ Integrated…
This short piece is very much a supplementary to my article ‘The Hidden Horrors of Hydro’ featured here on 23rd of August 2018 and of course the catalyst was the more recent (3rdJuly) article on pumped storage in Scotland by Dave Morris (see here). I was minded to do so because the negative profundity of pumped storage…
A couple of weeks ago Dave Morris and myself met with Mike Gifford, the Chief Executive, and two of the new directors of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) at their invitation. Among the subjects we discussed were the proposed mountain coaster, which CMSL has called a toboggan run, but in fact has nothing to do…
Two years ago I briefly considered the implications of invasive Sitka for native woodland on Ladylea Hill, in the north east corner of the Cairngorms National Park (see here). This week I spent three days hill walking in and around Glen Livet, in the central part of the northern Cairngorms. I had not spent time…
Following my first post (see here) on the muirburn on the North Morar estate on 25th April, after the end of the muirburn season, a reader prompted me to check whether the Scottish Government had been providing public monies to the landowners. On checking the DEFRA Rural Payments database, I wrote a further post showing the…
Looking West down Glen Falloch to Garabal Hill from the West Highland Line May 2026. Glen Falloch, the location of a large part of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s lottery funded…
Kirsty Young, the broadcaster, and her husband Nick Jones have put Inchconnachan back on the market through Sotheby’s, with two options for purchase: Mr and Mrs Young bought the island, famed for its Wallabies, four years ago for just £1,550,000 (see here). The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) then allowed them to use…
On Saturday I walked up White Coomb in the Borders through the Carrifran Wildwood, the native wood creation project that puts others to shame. Descending from Firthhope Rig I was quite surprised to find this Sitka sapling at about 750m in altitude. Usually once Sitka have reached this size they are very difficult to uproot…
[This article originally appeared last year in Mountain Views, the excellent journal of the North East Mountain Trust. I am pleased to republish it, following my post on Seedy Sitka (see here), using some additional photos from other areas to illustrate the points Drennan makes] A walk up Bern Vrackie is a good day out…
Last week the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) issued a news release (see here) which started with the following statement: “Members of the Public are being advised not to use the following paths into Abernethy Forest from Glenmore and Nethy Bridge during early mornings (before 8.30am) over the next few weeks to avoid disturbing breeding capercaillie: Ryvoan…
Last week Severin Carrell in the Guardian revealed that BrewDog had sold their “Lost Forest”, the Kinrara Estate, to Oxygen Conservation for £8.85m, £350k much more than the £8.5m they had paid for it five years previously (see here). This post considers some of the issues this raises including: why BrewDog sold the land for…
This is the first in a series of posts which looks at what forestry grants to large landowners to plant trees has done for native woodland in Scotland based mainly on the evidence I have seen on the ground over the last few years. It provides lessons for our National Parks, not least because of…
[This post was updated and corrected 12/2/26 to reflect the fact that the costs of creating new plantations are not fully met by Scottish Forestry grants] On Thursday Oxygen Conservation announced (see here) that they have been awarded £3.3m in forestry grants to plant a large chunk of the Invergeldie Estate north of Comrie. …
There can be few among us, who, when they hear the name ‘Galapagos’ do not have mental images conjured up, of all the wonderful TV documentaries over several decades, perhaps even going right back, as in my own case, to the black and white transmissions of ‘Baby-Boomer’ childhood. The Galapagos are imprinted on our collective…
The BBC Scotland Outdoors radio programme broadcast from Cairn Gorm on 17th January (see here) included a piece on the montane planting project in Coire na Ciste. You would not know from listening to it on BBC sounds (here between 48-54 minutes) that there had been any controversy about the project, both because the Caledonian…
A video from July 2024 of the site can be seen here. Readers may be familiar with Stobo (see here and here) perhaps one of Scotland’s most environmentally destructive forestry schemes this century. In February 2024, Scottish Forestry awarded a £2 million taxpayer funded contract to the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund, a ‘registered collective investment…
[NB this post was revised at 15.30 on 15th mainly to clarify/expand on some points] The Caledonian Pinewood remnant at Coille Coire Chuilc (CCC), on the edge of Cononish Glen near Tyndrum, was first protected in 1949 as part of the Ben Lui National Nature Reserve and then designated as a separate Site of…
I had intended to include two more photos in my recent post on Coire Coire Chuilc (see here) to illustrate just how daft some managers who claim to be conservationists are when it comes to managing access. While walking through Coille Coire Chuilc, having ignored the exhortation from the Auchreoch Estate’s ” Pines and Wildlife…
I visited Coille Coire Chuilc (CCC), the second most southerly Caledonian Pinewood in Scotland near Tyndrum and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), on Tuesday. The main purpose of the visit was to look at the state of the pinewood with two other people but also wanted to check whether the unlawful access sign…
The legacy of BrewDog and Scottish Woodlands at Kinrara (2) – the Caledonian Pinewood on the Dulnain
I have delayed this second post on the Lost Forest because I wanted to use what has happened at Kinrara to illustrate the arguments I and a number of others made in a paper published in the latest edition of Scottish Forestry: “Caledonian Pinewoods. A Conservation Framework” (Volume 79 No 3 Autumn/Winter 2025). Vicky Allan has…