Many of you will have travelled through Glen Feshie (e.g. on the Cairngorm Loop route) and might be interested in this short photo essay

https://www.scotlandbigpicture.com/Downloads/STBP-stories-TheGlen.pdf

It helps show what could be done if we could only get away from the game monoculture.

Cheers for that appreciated!

Pete’s “Caledonia – Scotland’s heart of pine” is a regular book for me – I love flicking through the images.

Edit: some more
https://treesforlife.org.uk/blogs/article/glenfeshie-reborn/

I wonder if anyone has done a ranking of estates in terms of environmental quality, for example Coignafearn did a huge amount of good work while others are comparative wastelands. I shall ask at work tomorrow.

SNH will have that data.

Edit: here it is
http://www.snh.gov.uk/planning-and-development/environmental-assessment/sea/

I use another related data set, relating all Scottish schools to nearest green space.

Ah – Coignafearn. The only time I’ve been right down there was a spin out from home on the road bike and I stood at the end of the tarmac road staring wistfully at the gravel track disappearing up the glen……

Coignafearn is magical in autumn, the salmon spawn in the river right by the road. Rausing put a lot of effort and money into repairing the damage caused by years of intensive management for game and took a lot of flak for it from the huntin n shootin brigade.

I’m not sure that is the right link matt?

The “Wildness” datasets here?

http://gateway.snh.gov.uk/natural-spaces/

Sorry – scotroutes has it. Hours of map fun…

things are slowly getting better. thanks for the link tho Scotroutes – its been a few years since I was in feshie.

Ah ok, I don’t think any of those would reflect eg the management of coignafearn in comparison to the neighbouring estate etc, they are quite high level analyses. I suspect what I’m thinking of would be very hard to do and require a lot of access to land and how it’s been managed, which many landowners would not want to be part of anyway.

Fascinating reading. Thanks. What can we do to help ?

Nice little article. Unleash the wolves!

difficult square to circle but
MacDonell retains a positive perspective.

Last page of pdf.

Will there be unicorns?

cheers for that.
Another estate that used to be good IMO & E was Letterewe. Reg and I biked up to the Heights of Kinlochewe years ago to do some Fisherfield Munros. Along comes a Land Rover. Out jumps a gent. “oh oh” we thought. Wrong. Chap asks us where we’re heading, pointing out the feats to look out for, where the deer herds might be, couldn’t have been nicer. After we’d bid farewell, we reckoned on reflection it was likely Paul Vlissingen estate owner and pretty decent chap.

The Letterewe Accord was pretty much the blueprint for Section 1 of the LR(S)A.

http://www.ramblers.org.uk/news/walk-magazine/current-issue/2013/march/spring-2013/a-decade-of-freedom.aspx

Things are moving in the right direction – you must be seeing this as well Scotroutes. On my last big walk we found numerous areas where the vegetation / ecosystem was recovering – sometimes deliberate planting, sometimes exclusion of deer using fencing, one area it looked like a massive deer cull had been done / sheep grazing had been stopped as there were young trees growing on open hillsides without any fencing.

One issue that remains with me is that for the land to “live” there must be usage of it for more than tourism. I don’t want to see the highlands become a park just for tourists like me. I want to see flourishing populations, repopulating the empty glens, sustainable work for locals.

Its also hard to see objective ways of measuring “good development” and even agreeing what it is. Biodiversity? Woodland coverage? Access for walkers adn cyclists? We all know good land stewardship when we see it – but do we all look for the same things? Its obvious some estates are “better” than others but how do we define this and how do we esure good practicve is followed?

Finally I would like to see different blood sports treated differently. Its very hard to make a “utility” case for grouse shooting. However deer numbers need to be reduced and its a fine source of organic / freerange meat so there is a utility argument in favour of deer shooting.

I know there’s new planting along the Dee, the Geldie and the Gairn, though in some cases they’ve had to be fenced in to prevent grazing. But yes, there has to be more than tourism. I was arguing this very point last week on here. There’s a danger that the Highlands becomes MacDisney, full of low paid jobs and ghetto social housing.

Given modern communications tech and electricity generation could there be off grid communities in the glens? Even smallholdings? Remote working in IT? Eco / hippy villages? Trouble is I don’t want to see roads built into the empty glens and I realise that the two things may be mutually incompatible

One thing that has troubled me but I may be seeing it with my tourist eyes was the amount of new housing in assynt that seems to be holiday housing mainly – certainly a lot of new building since they gained control of the land.

Trouble is I don’t want to see roads built into the empty glens and I realise that the two things may be mutually incompatible

Start with the ones that are already serviced by a road. To give things a bit of a jump start the government (local and national) could build homes and retain ownership but let them out to their workers who can work remotely. This would require investment in broadband infrastructure but at least when up and runing should encourage other development.

Nice little article. Unleash the wolves!

And the beavers!