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Windfarm campaigners fear birthday blues for Cairngorms National Park





There has been an outcry over the number of wind farms planned for on the boundary of the Cairngorms National Park
There has been an outcry over the number of wind farms planned for on the boundary of the Cairngorms National Park

Anti-windfarm campaigners confess they "dread to think" that the Cairngorms National Park’s 10th birthday present could be 31 turbines at Allt Duine by Kincraig.

The Save the Monadhliath Mountain Campaign claims the park is "under seige" by an onslaught of windfarm applications, with the Badenoch wind factory overstepping the mark.

The Scottish Government is now weighing up its Reporter’s recommendations on the plan for Allt Duine, by Kincraig and it is anyone’s guess when a decision will be made, but the SMMC this week again stressed:

A spokesperson said: "If allowed to progress, the wind farm would wreck the Monadhliath skyline and contribute to the gradual encircling of the north-western boundary of the park – with turbines visible from iconic high points on Cairngorm Mountain and popular Munros within the Monadhliaths as well as Ben Macdui, Cairn Gorm and Braeriach".

Objectors have always maintained that the 31 turbines, the majority of which are 125 metres in height, are completely inappropriate for a wild area of outstanding natural beauty.

The spokesperson said: "The cabling, roads and turbines will have an irrevocable impact on the landscape, wildlife and ornithology of the park and the Monadhliath Mountains – an area that the Scottish Government wishes to protect through its emerging new Core Wild Land Area policy".

The author, TV presenter and spokesman for the SMM campaign, Cameron McNeish, said: "On the 10th anniversary, we should be celebrating the national park and its beauty, not fighting a wind farm proposal metres from its boundary with kilometres of new road and cabling in the park itself."

As observers had noted at the public enquiry, the application from RWE Npower Renewables also calls for a sub-station within the park itself, on Alvie Estate, through which the power from the wind farm will be routed.


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