On 19th March the Herald revealed (see here) that Scottish Forestry, having suspended grant payments to BrewDog after it was revealed many of the trees in the Lost Forest had died, has now paid them £1.2m and agreed to pay a further £1.5m for the project. This post takes another look at the scandal in the…
Tag: scottish forestry
Last week I visited the Allt Broighleachan Caledonian Pinewood Reserve on the north side of Glen Orchy (and outside the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park) on my way to Glen Coe. It was my second visit, inspired in part by the Caledonian Pinewood Conference which took place last Autumn and which I viewed online…
The risk to Nick’s proposal to suspend the Scottish Forestry Grants system for a year (see here) is that you destroy the woodland creation capacity we currently have, including tree nurseries, and in a way that we never get it back again. No-one will ever trust the Scottish Government again and they won’t invest in…
In my last post I argued that the Scottish Government should transfer some of the £53m it has allocated for forestry grants next year to its own agency, Forest and Land Scotland, to reduce deer on its land. What’s been happening at Glen Prosen, which FLS bought in Autumn 2022 (see here), provides a good…
How to reduce Scotland’s climate emissions and damage to nature – suspend the forestry grants system
On 19th December 2023 the Scottish Government announced that Scottish Forestry’s grant budget would be cut by £32m or 41% for the year 2024/25. Almost a year later the Scottish Government, in its budget for 2025/26 announced ion 4th December, is proposing to increase spending on forestry grants next year from £45,367,000 to £53,000,000 a…
Having been investigating for some time the way in which Scotland’s forestry grants have been used to destroy nature and release carbon into the atmosphere in the Cairngorms National Park, I did not foresee the whole system would start to implode in the Borders. What is happening at Stobo Hope, on the north side of…
There are two ways in which the Scottish Government attempts to increase the extent of native woodland grant at present, the first is by directly funding native woodland creation like at Far Ralia or BrewDog’s Lost Forest, the second is by requiring all new and re-planted commercial forestry to include a proportion of native trees….
After putting Far Ralia on the market for £12m in July (see here)at the end of September Abrdn’s Property Income Trust (APIT) announced it had reached a deal to sell all the remaining propterties it owned to GoldenTree Asset Management (see here). This post consider the implications. Far Ralia and the sale of Abrdn Property…
While Dave Morris has discussed Brewdog in a couple of posts (see here) parkswatch has not covered how they have been managing their “Lost Forest” since the end of April (see here). I had hoped to visit Kinrara first to check on how the replacement planting for all the dead trees was going (see here)….
Importance of the pinewoods. Forestry policy, private and public landowners and deer management will be under scrutiny next week at the native pinewoods conference in Fort William (28/29 Oct see here). This post examines what needs to happen to save our ancient Caledonian pinewoods and who might lead the way. The future of our Caledonian…
On 30th September the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) and NatureScot launched a five year Emergency Plan for Capercaillie (see here) claiming it as “the most comprehensive plan of its kind ever produced for this iconic bird”. We have now moved from the Capercaillie Life Project 2002-07 to the Capercaillie Framework, launched in 2013, to…
The story of Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority and the Flamingo Land development (1)
I have written a number of posts over the last seven years about the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA’s) involvement in the proposed Flamingo Land development at Balloch, on the south shore of Loch Lomond, but never put the whole story together. It deserves to be widely known before the LLTNPA Board…
I have not visited Far Ralia, the land in the Cairngorms National Park Abrdn’s Property Income Trust (APIT) bought for £7.5m three years ago and has now put on the market for £12m, since January. I have, however, recently obtained a copy of an inspection Scottish Forestry (SF) conducted in June through a freedom of…
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…
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…
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…
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”…
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…
How many of the trees planted at Kinrara last year have survived? After my posts in the autumn about the destruction being caused by BrewDog’s tree planting at Kinrara and how it has been releasing carbon into the atmosphere (see here) and (here), I heard through a third party that someone with professional expertise thought…
Ten days ago tree nurseries were in the news (see here) when Christie’s of Fochabers were quoted as claiming “We will have to burn millions of trees after cuts” as a result of the Scottish Government deciding to cut funding for tree planting by 44% to £45.4m next year. The BBC quoted Mr Christie, the…
While staying in Newtonmore over New Year I heard that Storm Gerrit, which had hit Scotland on Boxing Day, had caused some spectacular damage in the lower parts of Glen Feshie. On my last day I went to have a look, little expecting that I would also get a post on sheep and woodland out…
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…
It is just over a year since I explained how the Cairngorms National Park Authority has ignored the role of deer fencing in the decline of capercaillie (see here). While the causes of capercaillie and black grouse decline are complex – they include loss of habitat and climate change – the one thing that has…