Yesterday, running off Ill Bell on the Kentmere horseshoe my daughter glimpsed a raptor landing just to her left and stopped. I was 10m behind and would have missed it. A chance in a life time. We watched the peregrine while it occasionally preened. It was unconcerned by our presence and I wondered at first…
Tag: conservation
Galloway is one of the areas most likely to be selected as Scotland’s third National Park (see here) due to high levels of support locally. That support has been driven by concerns about the increasing encroachment of windfarms, the intensification of agriculture in the coastal areas and the impact of commercial forestry plantations, all of…
Following the online protest organised by the Grampian Moorland Group against the National Park Partnership Plan (see here), Scotland’s “Regional Moorland Groups” have been putting a glossy leaflet through the door of every household in the Cairngorms National Park. The Moorland Groups are shadowy organisations (see here) that do not declare their membership so it…
Today the Grampian Moorland Group have been mounting an online protest (see here) against the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA)’s proposals to reduce the numbers of red deer in the National Park from around 11 to 5- 8 per square kilometre. The protest is backed by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) (see here) and Scottish…
Unless tree shelter manufacture has been revolutionised recently it looks remarkably like the Chief Executive of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) was celebrating the erection of hundreds of plastic tree tubes along the River Larig in Balquhidder last week. Incredibly his tweet – fake news about conservation – got 49 likes…
Ten days ago I went to have a look at the (larger) part of the Ralia estate that has been bought by Standard Life but first had to pass through the part of the prorperty that borders the A9 and has been retained by the previous owners. I had been there several times in the…
I have been spending a few days in the Lake District National Park where the use of plastic tree tubes appears even more widespread than in Scotland’s National Parks. A short walk up Raven Crag, above Thirlmere, provides a good illustration of the stupidity of what is going on. (As an aside, everywhere you walk…
Two separate planning applications have been submitted on behalf of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) to create new roads and tracks at Cairn Gorm both of which are currently being considered by the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA). The first is for two new hill roads (see here for papers), the second is to develop…
One reason I walked up the Ardchullarie path last week (see here) was that I had wanted to take a look at the state of forestry road above. I had blogged about this in March 2021 after Jane Meek had sent some horrendous photos (see here). One year on the road looks as bad as…
Inchconnachan, the Loch Lomond island, has been in news recently because of the proposals to get rid of its wallabies. This is linked to the planning application (see here) that has been submitted by the new owners, Kirsty Young and her husband Nick Jones, to develop luxury tourist accommodation on the island, part of the…
[Editor’s note: this article follows John Urquhart’s proposal for an alternative high level route above Loch Lomond (see here) and my follow-up post on the discussion of the A82 upgrade at the December LLTNPA meeting (see here)]. If Loch Lomond Park and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) had been given £400m to spend on transport…
There is an interesting article in the December edition of Scottish Birds, the quarterly magazine of the Scottish ornithologists club, about nuthatch colonisation on the Glenfalloch Estate at the head of Loch Lomond. The authors, who work for Alba Ecology Ltd, have been undertaking annual breeding bird surveys of the area since 2015. They report…
[Update: since posting this I have been contacted by Seafield Estates who have informed me that “there are 20 sheep in Kinveachy, they have not been there long and we have already arranged for them to be gathered and returned to their rightful owner”. They also told me that “There are occasionally sheep in the…
The same flock of sheep that are slowly killing off part of the Coille Coire Chuilc Caledonian Pine remnant (see here) appear to be destroying areas of peat bog on the broad summit ridge of Fiarach, the hill above. It’s on the same landholding, Auchreoch, bought by Richard Bayman Lewis of Killin for £240k in 2014….
Among the photos of Adam Watson there are a number of Ballochbuie, an important remnant of the Caledonian Pine Forest on the Royal Family’s estate at Balmoral which was overgrazed for years and has now been fenced to keep the deer out. I had not been intending to feature another of Adam’s photos so soon,…
Dave Morris paid tribute to Adam Watson, the great ecologist of the Cairngorms, shortly after his death (see here) but Parkswatch has done little else to celebrate and promote his work and legacy. Over the last year Jenny Aitchison, Adam’s daughter, has been sending me copies of photos he took in the Cairngorms, starting with…
In November I spent an hour or so on the eastern side of Coille Coire Chuilc, north west of Crianlarich (for maps showing location see below). The wood (“coille”) is the second most southerly fragment of the Caledonian Pine Forest in Scotland and protected as such, being a Site of Special Scientific Interest and being…
I have not blogged about the Glen Etive hydro schemes since preliminary construction work started two years ago (see here). I am afraid I have kept away. I was very pleased, therefore, but also extremely concerned to be sent these recent photos of the Allt Charnan by John Sinclair, a local resident. What you can…
Following his post on the A82 upgrade (see here), John Urquhart and other volunteers from the Helensburgh and District Access Trust (HADAT) requested a deputation to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board on their alternative proposals for a high road linking Tarbet and Invernan. This was accepted and the HADAT delegation was…
In my recent post criticising the use of plastic tree tubes to plant woodland in the Cairngorms (see here), I argued that tree shelters wouldn’t be necessary if nature was not so out of kilter – primarily due to sporting land management. The addiction of the native woodland planting business to tree tubes, however, goes…
In Scotland it is often easy to tell whether land is protected for nature, it looks, sounds and feels like nature is doing well. Ben Dolphin explained this recently in a fine article for walkhighlands (see here) about why Scotland’s Nature National Reserves are a good place to walk. The challenge for both the Scottish…
One thing the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) needs to fix urgently in the new National Park Partnership Plan, which is currently out for consultation, is the plastic tree tube problem (see here). The case against using plastic in the countryside I had not driven along the A95 north of Grantown-on-Spey for a number of…
As a campaigner who is trying to change how Scotland’s two National Parks are managed, I am always pleased when posts are picked up by the mainstream media. I never expected my blog on the Royal Family and COP26 (see here) to end up on the front page of the Scottish edition of The Times…
While working on my last post criticising the response of the leadership of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority to the climate emergency (see here), I had no idea of the damage that had by wrought by Storm Arwen at Stronachlachar in the Trossachs. My thanks to the Steamship Trust for including parkswatch…
The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) website has had a makeover. If you click on their site address https://www.lochlomond-trossachs.org/ you are greeted by a photo of a digger in the uplands, the hashtag slogan “Let’s do net zero” and a page of links to information on various aspects of the “climate emergency…