Wild Land News no 55, Spring 2002

Cairngorms - a better turning? Article

15 years after the Scottish Wild Land Group highlighted both the value and troubles of the landscape, Bill Wright warns that simple National Park designation will not answer all the ills identified over a decade and a half ago.

City lofts hide all sort of forgotten material. In my case a recent sort out revealed a dust covered Scottish Wild Land Group Publication entitled 'Cairngorms at the Crossroads', which after grubbing through it for some time I pinned down to 1987. The city loft here is within the forgotten diocese of Dunkeld, under certain definitions, Britain's second smallest city. Daft really.

But then definitions for lovers of wild places have also always been a struggle. Getting the wild land experience on a formal par with exceptional achievement in fine art, architecture, music or athleticism has always been a battle. The massif significance of the Cairngorms has time and time again been repeatedly documented - not least in the 1987 work that I rediscovered in my loft - but meaningful designation of wild and remote places has until recently been too great a step for those that shape and control the landscape.

The difference now is we are at least on the verge of a step forward, a birth, but a birth which might lead to disability. National Park designation for the Cairngorms is about fifty years overdue. Personally I reckon the reasons for that delay was largely a combination of its ownership pattern, ambivalence of some conservation bodies, the geography of Scotland, lack of Westminster parliamentary time and not to mention the House of Lords.

That has now significantly changed.

The establishment of the Scottish Parliament has revolutionised the availability of Parliamentary time to talk about Scottish matters, the positioning and influence of the lairds and increased the importance for Scotland of visiting our wilder corners (thanks to foot and mouth disease). Not least it has passed a National Parks Act (Scotland). Most of the key conservation bodies are on board too.

Largest National Park in UK

Now in the Cairngorms we are on the threshold of a historical event - the establishment of the UK's largest national Park, twice the size of any other before it. The problem is that while such an extensive National Park, the opportunity to change the scene within its boundaries or address such business that would further wreck it are going through a risky confinement.

Planning powers, as proposed, are in the main to remain with local authorities. Among them those who have seen through the funicular and tried to get development westwards into the Northern Corries - one of the battle sites identified so powerfully in the 1987 'Cairngorms at the Crossroads'.

The reasons for this seem both confusing and cynical. Cynical because of local politicians too often fed by the agendas of those in tax paid officialdom. It regularly appears that to date, the Enterprise Agencies in particular have sought to play down the value of the Cairngorms wild, remote and natural character. Instead they have invested our money in favouring short-term jobs advantages however badly paid or insecure. Jobs not sufficiently attractive to stick with beyond the time a passing student from Oz would want to put up with such terms or conditions.

Similarly too often party politics has shaped the landscape of Strathspey in particular - in concrete. Political populism in the area has repeatedly been favoured rather than taking a deeper examination of the issues and consequently presenting an unpopular but longer term vision beyond the four years that MSPs will be paid. Councillors similarly have sought to follow what they think people want within the time they are due to be re-elected, rather than present imaginative alternatives that will be a source of pride, rather than embarrassment, in decades to come.

Compromise on planning powers

The confusion comes in when examining the planning compromise that Scottish Natural Heritage, as Cairngorms National Park Reporters, have consequently come up with. They attempted to address the yawning gap between those wishing to retain local authority planning powers and those of us wishing to ensure the new Cairngorms National Park Board has the power to shape the landscape it has been given responsibility for.

I indulge in such rhetoric because 15 years on from the Wild Land Group's analysis of the Cairngorms, the evidence is all too plain. Things have yet to improve in a manner that will eg ensure that the scourge of the Cairngorms wild remoteness, the bulldozer, is to be firmly booted off the hills.

Apart from the funicular, within recent months for example Highland Council have yet again given the go ahead for a new bulldozed track stretching up a hillside within the proposed National Park boundary. This time they even have allowed it on the Southern slopes of Carn na Lair in the full gaze of those driving North on the A9.

The pressures amount to more than additional scarring from tracks, poorly situated visitor centres and consequent tourist erosion. Housing controversies may appear less relevant for the devotees of wild land. But local authority plans for vast housing expansion within Strathspey have implications way beyond the Strath. The upstream consequences extend to some of the places most cherished for their lonely charm. The infrastructure needed to supply such housing expansion in the straths means for example development of remote Loch Einich for water supply.

To address such complexities an integrated approach is vital in strategic planning, local plans and development control. It also means weighing up allied local authority and commercial developer demands for more housing against National Park aims. Without full planning powers it is difficult to see how candidates might come forward for the five directly elected places on the National Park Board when counterparts in Loch Lomond & the Trossachs will have so much greater power.

Additionally under the complicated joint working arrangements for strategic and local planning two opportunities will be afforded to local councillors to vote on plans when they have only one. Like those five members directly elected, local council members will have the opportunity for their say on the National Park Board. But the same councillors will also have their say again at their local council. So called 'joint' arrangements with at least 40% of the board already made up of local council reps, thus weighs heavily in favour of local authorities, when the National Park Board decisions also then have to get past local councils!

To the wanderer in search of solace, fresh air, open space and adventure in the lost corners of these mountains such murky affairs may appear about as appealing as being shut away in a dark, dusty city attic. But for the Cairngorms to remain so wild, challenging and unique, the National Park framework that will shape their future has to be effectively drawn for those qualities to be maintained and perhaps with the right direction, even restored.

Bill Wright is Campaign Officer of the Cairngorms Campaign.

Contact details: Tel: 01350 727152. Fax: 01350 727711
Email: wright@cairngormscampaign.org.uk Web: www.cairngormscampaign.org