“We’re calling what’s happening in the Cairngorm National Park, the carbon clearances,” said Robert MacDonald, one of the farmers behind a protest that took place last week outside the Cairngorm National Park Authority offices.
The Cairngorms Crofters and Farmers Group, members of which together hold more than 220,000 acres of the national park, had gathered to voice their grievances over the recent release of beavers into the park, but their complaints were much wider than that. “Beavers,” one of the farmers said, “were just what kicked the whole thing off.”
Last month, two pairs of beavers were released in the Cairngorms, marking their return to the Cairngorms 400 years after the species disappeared from Scotland. Further beaver families are planned for release in the national park.
“Carbon clearances are happening in the Highlands now,” said Mr MacDonald who farms suckler cows and breeding ewes near Grantown-on-Spey.
“They’re clearing the people out of the Glens and the Straths and letting it go for rewilding and it’s there for all to see that when you do that the place dies, because the local shop, the post office, the garage, are all depending on these shepherds, game-keepers, farmers, crofters going in and keeping them going..”
Among the processes Mr MacDonald blames for driving people off the land are “rewilding, peatland restoration, tree-planting and all these environmental issues”.
But how much are these policies behind these ‘clearances’? When asked for a response, a Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) spokesperson said: “There is absolutely no evidence of peatland restoration having a negative impact on farming and local companies have expanded employment to carry out this work.
“There is significant employment on estates that are carrying out landscape-scale conservation. For instance the four estates within Cairngorms Connect employ over 55 full-time equivalent. It is a farmer or a landowner’s choice whether to plant trees or restore peatland. There are lots of farmers doing great work on nature and climate and it is not an either or.”
CNPA also added: “The Rural Payments Scheme supporting farmers and crofters and the legislation regulating agriculture is exactly the same in the park as it is outwith the park. There are no additional requirements or provisions to financial support. Also, many farms are diversified and benefit from the 2 million visitors that come to the park and support a significant part of the economy.”
On beaver mitigation, the Park Authority notes that it is “adding significant resource over and above that which the national scheme affords”.
Nevertheless, the anger and grievance is there. Members of the Cairngorms Crofters and Farmers Group hold in excess of 220,000 acres in park. At the Grantown-on-Spey protest, forty of them marched, bearing placards with lines that included, “You can’t eat trees”, “Farmers for biodiversity”, “Bring us on board”, alongside 21 farm vehicles, which displayed slogans, “This is not the Park we were Promised” and “We are not Mushrooms, Don’t Keep us in the Dark!”.
Amongst the biggest concerns of the farmers, Mr MacDonald said, is that not enough consideration is being made “to where the food is going to come from”.
On this, he did not entirely blame the park authority. "I see the National Park," he said, "as an extension of the Scottish Government which seems to have forgotten about food production. It’s actually quite worrying that people who are governing over us don’t seem to have any comprehension as to where their food is coming from. That is a lot of the feeling – that food production in this mad rush for net zero seems to have taken a back seat."
The group, Mr MacDonald said, is looking for “dialogue first and foremost – so that the park can realise our needs and our wants because they don’t at the moment".
However, the CNPA notes that there has been dialogue. Cairngorms Farmers Forum was first launched by the Park Authority in 2009 and has run meetings, events and a Facebook group "on and off over a number of years up to 2019". During the consultation on the National Park Partnership Plan in 2021, the authority met with farmers. The NFUS is involved in many of the Park groups, and there are currently three farmers on the National Park board.
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Still, many in the protest group feel unheard and disillusioned. Mr MacDonald said that he had been in favour of the national park when it was originally formed. “That was because we were promised of all the benefits that would accrue to the land managers within the national park. We were promised all these things that would benefit us. But none of it has ever come to pass.”
He listed some of the disadvantages of farming within the national park. “If I lived a mile down the road, past where the National Park sign is, I would be able to claim £500 back on my electricity bill from the turbine companies, but because there is a unilateral ban on wind farms within the national park, that’s never going to happen for me.
"The other thing is the price of housing. As soon as the National Park was announced up here the price of housing shot up. ”
A CNPA spokesperson pointed out that farmers within the area have benefited from £180k funding (over the past two years) over and above what is available through national schemes, benefitting around 60 farms and 40 farmers.
“This includes carrying out carbon and biodiversity audits through the Future Farming programme, undertaking goose management across areas of Strathspey, paying for the restoration of dry stone dykes, undertaking mob grazing for diversity, and payments for capital infrastructure.”
Since the National Park was designated over 2000 houses have also been built in the area – and within Aviemore, Ballater, Braemar and Blair Atholl, the percentage requirement for affordable housing is 45%, more than the national requirement.
“The Park Authority," the spokesperson said, "does not control the sale or purchase of land within the National Park. The developing carbon market if properly regulated could have significant benefits for all types of land managers but it is a relatively new market. We understand the worry that some farmers have around these developing markets and it is something that we would like to discuss further with them.”
But finance is not the only issue for the group. Members also speak of loss of cultural heritage. Among those who turned up to Monday's protest was Neil Smith, a farmer and founder of the group.
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He observed: “The youngest members of our protest the other night were our two future grandchildren. They are two and six weeks away from joining us in person, but they’ve got a heritage and a history in this area preceding the Cairngorms National Park by hundreds of years. And that was true of nearly all the people that turned up outside the Cairngorm National Park offices.
“We’re concerned that someone that has ten acres and a family connection or community connection is equally or more deserving of a voice in the CNPA decision-making process and that voice shouldn’t be drowned out by land agents or rewilders, who adopt their land vision to endear themselves to Cairngorms policies, draining the bulk of the financial income streams that are intended to be shared across the park.”
Beavers, were Mr Smith said, "a breaking point".
The problem, he explained, was the park’s approach to consultation. "One of the points that we’ve raised in the National Park several times is that the consultation was masked under the banner of ‘Beaver Blethers’. This failed to engage with the communities and diminished the seriousness of the consultation. There was also a survey to which 500 people replied, but many were from outside the area.”
“But," he said, "it’s also the fact translocation license was issued by NatureScot in a go-ahead for the return of beavers, one day ahead of our first serious sit-down consultation with the National Park about the mitigation for the beavers. Yet this license was supposed to contain all mitigation for the core affected groups before approval.”
“We were sitting down the day after the license was approved. It was like the authorities were saying, ‘Beavers are coming.’ It must have been a PR disaster for the National Park.”
The CNPA said that both an informal consultation on beaver translocation and a formal consultation, in Spring and Summer 2023, had taken place – during which time there were 37 site visits and 19 meetings with landowners, as well as 6 formal drop-ins, attended by 104 people, local press articles, a leaflet, website information and an online survey. 515 people responded to the survey, with over three quarters in favour of the species returning.
“Farmers and crofters came together," a spokesperson said, "as the ‘Spey Farmers and Crofters’ group. Subsequent engagement with this group identified further concerns, notably around flood banks. As a result, changes were made to the management and mitigation plan that had been submitted, and a revised version was included as part of the licence application.
“The Management and Mitigation Plan was amended following feedback from farmers including the floodbank guarantee and it goes significantly beyond the national mitigation scheme. Some farmers did ask for a delay in the release of beavers for a year. The Park Authority had the licence to translocate the beavers and reintroduced 2 pairs on December 18.”
Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon said: “I have made absolutely clear that producing food is a key priority for the Scottish Government. One of the core aims of our Vision for Agriculture in the future is to meet more of our own food needs sustainably and we know the contribution that farmers in Cairngorm area and elsewhere already make to this, not only producing food, but also addressing climate change and protecting and restoring nature. There is no contradiction between high quality food production and doing so in a way that works for climate and nature.
"To ensure farmers can continue to produce food, unlike the UK Government, we are still paying them directly, and are committed to providing direct support in the future. We also support farmers to produce beef and lamb for our own and international markets. Those payments are not available elsewhere in the UK.
“In fact, we now provide Scotland’s farmers and crofters with the most generous package of direct support in the UK - worth over £600 million in 2024-25.”
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