Heavy trampling above an artificial “bog pool” has re-exposed the peat to the atmosphere and the forces of erosion, including trampling.Over the last week I have been combining some hillwalking with various site visits. On Saturday I walked over Carn Chuilinn, the Corbett south east of Fort Augustus, which I had not visited since the…
Tag: Scottish Government
The newly formed Rural Affairs Committee (RAC) of the Scottish Parliament are conducting what they describe as a short inquiry into Scotland’s access rights. The inquiry appears to have been prompted by claims from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) that access rights are impeding their ability to cull deer, although it appears likely to consider…
Following David Jarman’s highly informative 2024 powerpoint comparing the impacts of the various pumped storage hydro (PSH) schemes being proposed for Scotland (see here), I have been to look at Coire Glas, the site of SSE’s proposed scheme above Loch Lochy, twice in the last eighteen months. The first time was on a walk up…
{NB this post has been updated on 25/10/26 to correct my mistaken assumption that the Woodland Trust bought the land from Locheil Estates] Background The areas of native pinewood around the east end and along the south shore of Loch Arkaig, taken together, form one the largest and most important remnants of the Caledonian forest…
Global warming caused by the release of CO2 into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is all too real and with that climate change. However, climate change is not affecting all parts of the world in the same way, as was demonstrated this summer by the differences in temperature and weather experienced in Scotland compared…
This morning the board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) is meeting for the first time since the Abernethy/Glenmore wildfire which started on Wednesday 15th July. Increasingly the CNPA has started to resemble the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority where staff take all the decisions and the board acts as a figleaf. The…
The following is a short summary of a draft report that I have prepared for my colleagues in Badenoch Climate Action to facilitate discussion about the origins of the Cairngorms wildfire in July/August 2026, its suppression and future considerations. Given the national and international reputation of the Cairngorms for wildlife, scenery and outdoor recreation, the…
On Friday the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) reduced the size of Abernethy/Glenmore the “Exclusion Zone” it had created in Glenmore/Abernethy. There is nothing I can find to announce the change on its website, apart from the changes in the map shown on its path closures webpage (see here) and nothing on its Facebook Page. …
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…
Walking back from Cook’s Cairn and Corryhabbie Hill in mid-June, I spotted shoeless hoof prints in Glen Suie and then a tepee and two horses in a field by the nearby estate bothy. I went over to have a look and got chatting to a woman minding the camp. She was with two companions and…
[NB This post was updated and corrected at 18.50 on 19th July. I wrongly reported the local resident as having seen smoke at 11am on Weds 15th about 45 mins before the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service were alerted to the fire when he had seen smoke in that area the day before. It was…
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 region represents every wild aspect of the Central Highland scene – wooded lochs, strong rivers, high flat-topped mountains with rock corries deeply inset, wide sweeps of grass rather than the heather of the Cairngorms, peat-hag and bog, broad bealachs and sharp ravines, and good tracks.” So wrote Bill Murray, in his 1962 Highland Landscape,…
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…
At the end of June I went for a walk over Conic Hill, starting from Milton of Buchanan and then back along the main road from Balmaha. The first part of the route, which I have followed several times before, takes the West Highland Way through the western edge of Garadhban forest, owned by Scottish…
Following my post on the Loch Lomond South Community Development Trust (LLSCDT)’s registration of interest in Scottish Enterprise’s land at Balloch (see here), their accounts were published on 6th July by Companies House (see here). This was the day before the deadline and these were first accounts to appear since the company was incorporated on…
Just before she resigned as First Minister in March 2023 Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Government pushed through the Scottish Parliament what were described as “radical” changes in planning policy. This included giving the green light to any renewable developments, of whatever scale, that would help to meet UK renewable energy targets, emphasising that Scotland’s 42 Wild…
Eleven months after the largest wildfire ever recorded in the British Isles burned large parts of Dava Moor, hare’s tail cotton grass has expanded to cover much of the exposed peat. Out of destruction a scene of beauty! Carbon emissions from peatland are estimated to add c3.5% to the UK total. Bare peat, some of…
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…
The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) describes itself (see here) as ‘the UK’s government-backed standard for creating new woodlands that generate high-integrity carbon credits’ and is managed by Scottish Forestry. The WCC is based on a number of key assumptions which are not explicitly stated: the first is that since trees take CO2 out of the…
Recently, while researching my post on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) local member elections (see here), I came across this revealing post on Linked In (see here): Having been writing for a number of years about how staff at the LLTNPA control board members (see here for example), I should have…
After my post about how the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) no longer provides emails to board members on grounds of national security (see here) a reader sent me a link (see here) about board members on the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA). The LDNPA, like the CNPA, has a new website but seems to…
Last Friday, the day of the Scottish Parliamentary election count, the appeal by the locally elected member for Balloch, Sid Perrie, against the decision of the Standards Commission for Scotland (SCS) to suspend him from the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) for six months for sending six emails (see here) was due…
Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE)’s plans to build a mountain coaster, first proposed in 2018 and now described as a toboggan run, are now in the news (see here for example). A planning application was submitted to Highland Council on 2nd April and called-in by the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) on 27th April (see…
This post provides a follow-up to the uncontrolled fires I observed on Morar on 25th April (see here). The map shows that so far this year far more land has been burned in the east of Scotland than the west and that most of these fires have been on intensively managed grouse moors in the…