Public agency Forestry and Land Scotland told to 'pull its weight' at Cairngorms beauty spot
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Members of the Cairngorms National Park Authority have launched a blistering attack on one of their public agency partners.
Several members of the park’s board hit out at Forestry and Land Scotland’s lack of investment and management of their site at Glenmore.
Ex-park convener Xander McDade was one of those who did not hold back at the latest meeting at the organisation’s headquarters.
He said: “I have been left deeply unimpressed by FLS recently. They may have been putting a lot more resources in but it is from practically nothing to negligible in my opinion.
“I think that we as an authority are having to prop that up at great expense to other areas in our communities.
“This is a publicly owned landowner who are responsible for their own land and should be taking the vast bulk of the resource...
“We should not be doing the day to day management for them.”
Fellow board member Lauren MacCallum said: “We stood on the beach last week and got told that Glenmore is the most visited FLS site in Scotland other than perhaps Peebles which has a completely different user type.
“The fact that we have got three part time rangers and maybe one full-time ranger working limited hours is shocking to me.
“Those who lose out as we all know are local residents...”
She later said: “What also shocked me was the attitude of some members of FLS staff – the scoffing and the rolling of eyes made me so angry.
“People who are camping on the beach do think they are wild camping... If you are from Aberdeen and you are on the beach with that vista of the Northern Corries then you are wild camping.
“If we are not thinking like our visitors then we are not managing our visitors.
“I think FLS and the CNPA need to start putting the pressure on to get more resources there before there is a fire, or a death or something else extreme that happens.
“That is something which has ripped through the conversations I have had and we need to challenge the organisational snobbery because it is not getting us anywhere.”
Ms MacCallum also said she does not believe that further parking charges will deliver the ‘silver bullet’ that FLS think.
Board member Bill Lobban had triggered the debate by asking CNPA officials what level of resources FLS had committed to Glenmore, adding: “It does not seem to be a lot to me.”
He added local businesses did not even know who the appropriate FLS contact was for the area if there was a problem.
“I simply do not believe they are putting adequate resources into their site,” he said.
Murray Ferguson, the CNPA’s director of planning and rural development, said that he had been in contact with FLS ahead of the meeting and that they were treating the Glenmore Forest as one of their six national priority sites.
He said: “They have told me that they are putting more resources into the site than they ever have done before and have given details of their area management which is working across a rather broad geography and their site specific management.”
Mr Ferguson said, however, the CNPA was now also having to put more resources into Glenmore than any other part of the national park and this ‘raised questions’ whether the balance was right.
CNPA chief executive Grant Moir said: “Glenmore is under public ownership... it should be an exemplar of how to do this (of visitor management) and not the bit lagging behind.”
CNPA board convener Sandy Bremner summed up: “We will be seeking an urgent meeting with FLS to discuss resourcing.
“The one thing that is screamingly obvious is that it is inadequate at this moment and we will be expressing this very forcefully.”
FLS has contested the comments and described some of them as inaccurate.
Alex Macleod, FLS north region manager, said: “Some of the comments from the CNPA board members are disappointing and not entirely accurate.
“We have had four full-time members of staff – including three full-time recreation rangers – providing visitor services at Glenmore throughout the summer, and put a great deal of management and maintenance time into the Glenmore area.
“Our level of resource input is considerably greater than that of any other body and it is disheartening that some board members choose not to recognise this.
“We very much appreciate the assistance of the Cairngorms National Park Authority rangers and others such as the Highland Council parking enforcement officers, without these involvement the issues at Glenmore would have been considerably worse.
“Glenmore’s attractiveness and accessibility for visitors brings huge benefits to the tourism and recreation economy of the Cairngorms National Park.
“Most of the time this causes no issues but on occasion Glenmore is simply too busy, and does experience significant antisocial behaviour.
“We agree that more needs to be done to deal with this, accordingly we are keen to hold further discussion with CNPA.
“We are largely self-financing via timber sales and leases; this income helps to fund recreation provision and environmental improvements.
“However, funding for recreation management is limited.
“So it is essential that the park authority and the Highland Council continue to work with us to manage and moderate the recreation pressures on this special place, for the benefit of the visitors, local people and the wider economy.”
