Bulldozed road in Monadhliath, Photo: Richard Webb / CCSA
Mountaineers have condemned the Scottish Government as ‘feeble’ for its failure to stop new hill tracks being bulldozed through unspoilt landscapes. The Mountaineering Council of Scotland has been campaigning for all new tracks to require planning permission. This would prevent land owners from claiming that tracks are for agricultural use when they are really just for use by shooting parties or for other recreational purposes.
However planning minister Derek Mackay has announced that he is allowing a free-for-all to continue and will do nothing to prevent the construction of ever-more huge, unsightly and damaging hill tracks through previously unspoiled mountain landscapes.
David Gibson, MCofS Chief Officer, said: “We’re just days away from the 2013 Year of Natural Scotland and the Scottish Government has once again proved feeble in the protection of our countryside.
“We have a crazy situation where some tracks need permission and others don’t. This is easily abused by landowners who claim a track is agricultural when its only purpose is to get 4x4s to places which most people could walk to. Even worse, the tracks are often badly built, ugly and do real damage to plant and wildlife.
“Derek Mackay could have solved the problem easily and fairly by saying that all tracks need planning permission. But he has let Scotland down in exactly the same way that his government has over its failure to stop wind farms being built in unsuitable places.”
During the recent public consultation the MCofS was among a number of organisations which presented extensive evidence to the government that the planning system is being widely abused.