Keeping Loch Lomond

Hi, I'm Jonathan Sutherland, husband, father and urbanite.

I'm pretty lucky to be living in the central belt of Scotland,

alongside 2 million other people.

It means that within an hour I can be at the beach,

or I can be here, at the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park,

door to door in 35 minutes.

Let's just hope that the other 2 million people

aren't parked around the corner.

'The park covers 720 square miles,

'so there should be enough space for everyone.

'And there's a huge number of recreation activities on offer,

'enough to keep the whole family happy.

'The entire area is managed by the National Park Authority.

'It's their job to make sure the land,

'wildlife and the environment is protected for our enjoyment.'

One way to enjoy the park is to go camping,

it's great family fun

and it helps generate money for the local economy.

It has over 20 campsites, including this commercial one on the East Loch Lomond shore,

where there's plenty of space for camper vans, caravans and tents.

'A few miles along the loch side is a non-commercial campsite.

'Sallochy is owned by the Forestry Commission,

'it only holds 10 tents,

'and no caravans or campers are allowed here.

'The facilities are minimal, and not very glamorous.'

I'm heading to the hills to meet someone who avoids

all campsites, and the luxuries they provide, wild camper, Hebe Carus.

-Hi there, Hebe.

-Hi.

-Hebe, what is wild camping?

Wild camping is basically getting away from it all,

spending a night having an adventure away from roads,

away from people, and just being at one with nature, really.

Under the Land Reform Act you have a right to access,

as long as it's done responsibly, and that covers wild camping,

but it doesn't cover informal camping, but that's not to say

you can't do informal camping, which generally is beside the road,

it's easily accessible.

You can do it with a big tent, pile everyone out of the car,

you don't have to walk very far,

whereas proper wild camping is about lightweight tents,

you basically carry everything on your back,

and it's about carrying everything in, carrying everything out.

So, with wild camping, can you pretty much camp anywhere?

There's certain areas where you can't do it, which are specified

in the Land Reform Act, and in the Access Code,

which is where to have a look,

but it's pretty much governed by common sense.

Places you wouldn't do it are things like airfields,

school playing fields, right next to somebody's house,

in a field of cattle, in a field where there's crops growing.

So, there's certain restrictions,

but usually if you apply a bit of common sense,

it's covered, what's in the code.

And are there any age restrictions when it comes to wild camping?

There's not actually any specific age restrictions within

the Land Reform Act, or the Scottish Outdoor Access Code,

but it's certainly advisable, if you're under 18,

to take an adult along with you.

So, we've heard about the restrictions, Hebe,

what are a wild camper's responsibilities?

There's three main responsibilities.

You need to respect the needs of other people,

whether that's other people camping,

if you're on a big hillside, you don't want to go and camp

right next to them, and the needs of landowners as well.

They might have cattle or sheep that they're keeping,

that they need to look after.

Also, it's about respecting the environment.

If it's nesting season for birds, or it's about thinking about erosion,

not leaving any mark where you've been camping.

The final thing is really about safety.

It's about taking responsibility for yourself.

For example, you wouldn't want to camp below a cliff where

there's rocks falling off, or near cattle, that sort of thing.

So, Hebe, how do you find the perfect spot to set up camp?

That's part of the adventure of wild camping.

You need to get your map out, and figure out the best spot,

obviously an area of slightly flatter ground.

BIRDS SINGING

Right, Hebe, this looks like the perfect place for our tent.

How do we go about setting up a fire?

Right, lighting a fire is actually quite

an important issue to consider when you're camping, in terms of,

you can either cut down live wood, which is actually not legal,

or you can pick up some dead wood,

which would seem like a good idea, but the problem with that is,

that it's a really important,

and quite a rare habitat for some insects.

So, we try to avoid that.

In general, you should think carefully about fires.

The preferable approach is to use a stove.

I've been to various campsites

and there's always toilet facilities, what do we do here?

OK, when you are wild camping, you have to have one of these,

-a trowel, and one of these, a resealable plastic bag.

-OK.

The trowel is for digging a 10 or 15 centimetre hole somewhere,

and then, basically, you have to poo in the hole,

and then cover it over, because there are little microbes in the soil

that will break it down really quickly,

so that's the best way to deal with it.

The plastic bag is for your toilet paper.

When used, you want to put it in there,

and it's got to be resealable,

because you want to keep the smell inside.

And, basically, you have to carry that out,

and dispose of it when you get home.

Very good. Any other advice?

In general, if you're unsure about anything,

it's best to ask to make sure.

Ask your local ranger, or your access officer.

There's the Scottish Outdoor Access Code,

which you can look at online,

and that gives you guidance about various sides

to the responsible access issues.

Over 3.5 million people

visit the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park every year.

Could the park be a victim of its own success?

I discussed the matter with Bridget Jones, the Senior Access Officer.

Bridget, the park's had its fair share of problems

in terms of just dealing with the sheer number of visitors.

What had been the major issues?

The major issues in the national park have predominantly been linked

with the over-use of the park, so the capacity for visitors,

particularly on a busy, sunny weekend during the summer holidays.

Also, an element of misuse, caused by a minority of people

that engage in, perhaps, a bit of antisocial behaviour,

and have a negative impact on the majority of people

coming to enjoy themselves.

Mainly linked to alcohol, people coming in to have a bit of a party,

bringing in drink, leaving behind litter,

and rubbish behind, having a fire, and using green wood.

Cutting down the trees that are still growing.

-So, what did the Park do to solve this problem?

-We did a bit of research,

and that's when we got an idea that it was maybe younger folk coming in.

Talked to the local community, talked to landowners, the police,

the council, looked at a number of different measures to try

and tackle it, one of which was the introduction of camping bylaws,

which we have progressed, and the council progressed

the introduction of alcohol consumption bylaws.

These Loch Lomond camping bylaws restrict camping activity.

Essentially, within the restricted zone,

which runs just north of Drymen, just north of the Rowardennan,

you're not allowed to pitch a tent, a wigwam,

or even a bivouac at any time between 1st March

and 31st October.

Have these new restrictions been successful?

From our rangers out there enforcing the bylaws,

and from the police, they're getting the same feedback.

Where they are coming across groups, the groups are being receptive,

accepting that, OK, we were in a restricted zone,

we move on, and out of that area.

We're already seeing the recovery of the habitats in the areas.

The vegetation is starting to grow back,

where before it never got a chance.

So, early days, but so far it's looking very good.

I met two French hikers on this very road one evening. They'd been moved on by a ranger.

They had no idea where to go, what they were supposed to do,

only that they weren't supposed to camp here.

They had no information.

Luckily, I met them, and told them they could go further down the road.

And they did. That's not the message we want to be sending back to France, or anywhere else.

We want to welcome people into Scotland.

How detrimental an effect could this blanket ban have,

-in terms of people coming to the park?

-Absolutely.

The message will get out, they'll go home,

go on internet forums for outdoors, and they will say

"we had problems when we went there," and send people to other

long-distance tracks in other countries. We don't want to do that.

Barman, Jason Dobie works in a hotel in the West Highland Way,

and he's witnessed the effect the overindulgence of alcohol has had on the area.

The police would need to be called quite regularly at weekends.

They would need to be up and move people on.

Moving people on back then was just really awkward.

So it was a bad situation.

How much of a difference has the by-law made?

Massive. A huge difference.

It's a lot cleaner.

A lot more families are coming up.

Generally, it's just a nicer place. Definitely a lot less rubbish.

Hello there.

-How are you doing?

-Fine, thank you.

-I'm the national park police officer.

My colleague is a special constable, who's also a national park ranger.

Nice to meet you.

We're doing some patrols in the park just to speak to people

who are coming out camping.

When I work in the park, it is generally operational work I work on.

Dealing with anti-social behaviour, which can range from drinking

in areas you're not supposed to,

people camping inappropriately, hacking trees down.

There have been more serious crimes,

like assault and attempted murder, in some cases.

In 2011, since the by-laws have come in,

we've seen a marked reduction in the amount of serious incidents

we've had to deal with.

And we've seen a lot of families coming back to this area of the park

that were maybe put off before because of some of the incidents and bad reputation that built up.

More families are coming and they are enjoying the park for the purpose we want them to do.

Graham Slater, the general secretary of the Pike Anglers' Club of Great Britain, has concerns

about the camping by-law.

I think the message that's being sent very clearly,

by the amount of signage about, is very negative indeed.

We're turning people away when we shouldn't be.

What we should be doing is encouraging people,

"enforcing", perhaps, is a better word,

that people take the rubbish away with them.

That's the answer to it.

Not the blanket ban that the camping ban has introduced.

It's to educate people and make them take the rubbish away.

To those concerned about access rights, we're saying this is an area

where the problems had got to such an extent that we had to break the cycle.

It's not something we took on lightly. There was a lot of consideration.

In the long term, it'll bring a better experience for people

and we will provide semi-formal camping opportunities within the restricted zone.

So it doesn't prevent you camping in the area,

but where you do camp, it's in a managed situation.

It's the national park's natural beauty that attracts us here in the first place.

There's a huge amount of work being done to keep that beauty pure.

Is it heavy-handed? That depends on your point of view.

I'm at the northern end of Loch Lomond.

The view, as you can see, is much admired.

The loch an icon of the Scottish tourism industry.

Today, any developments around this treasured landmark

are controlled by the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park.

Nothing happens here without the park authority's say-so and approval.

But this hasn't always been the case.

The national park has only been in existence since 2002.

Different times have different needs.

Loch Lomond provided other more useful opportunities to a Scotland emerging from World War II.

The mountains around Loch Lomond had already been surveyed

and now engineers and road builders arrive to build access roads

into the mountains above Loch Lomond.

They've come to reach a small stretch of water called Loch Sloy.

This was the start of the ambitious plan to build hydro schemes

throughout the glens of Scotland.

In May 1945, the ground at Sloy was ceremoniously broken.

For the next five years, the workforce drilled and blasted.

They suffered 21 fatalities before the dam was complete.

Through a network of pipes and aqueducts, water from all around

was brought into Sloy, doubling the size of the loch,

providing a vast and deep basin of energy ready to be released.

By 1950, that power flowed.

Within 20 years, the Hydro Board had constructed a vast network

of hydro schemes throughout Scotland,

making Scotland's waterways some of the most managed in the world.

But then, in 1978,

the Hydro Board turned its attention to the much-loved Ben Lomond.

Their aim to run a series of hydro pipes down the mountain's face to Craigroyston was too much

and, for a growing number of Scots, constituted an act of vandalism.

A protest group called the Friends Of Loch Lomond formed ranks and rallied for a fight.

The charity grew rapidly.

200,000 signatures were produced on a petition fairly swiftly.

The plans were fought and the scheme was withdrawn in the end.

So Ben Lomond had been saved for the nation and for the world, really.

I remember studying that when I was a student,

the pump station that was proposed on Ben Lomond

was what gave birth to the Friends Of Loch Lomond.

That was eventually abandoned for a number of reasons,

including the strength of local feeling about the impact on Ben Lomond.

I can't see anything like that being contemplated within the park

and certainly anything that's going to be a massive impact

on the landscape would be difficult for us to encourage or support.

You might think the National Park Authority arrives,

the Friends Of Loch Lomond says that's great and supports the formation of the national park

and would then quietly disband.

But we've discovered the opposite is the case.

Because the National Park Authority is simply a branch of Government

and when the minister says "do this", that is what that organisation will have to do,

because they're being instructed by their employer, effectively.

While there's excellent protection for Loch Lomond and The Trossachs,

thanks to the National Park Authority -

masses of fantastic work all over the national park -

there are areas where there are significant dangers.

The national park plan is a key thing for us.

These are the points at which a small charity like ours, with limited resources,

can actually influence the future of the national park for five-plus years.

Because if we can get things set into that park plan in writing,

in stone, as it were, then they generally will happen,

because that's an adopted plan, the Government has approved it,

the board of the national park have approved it.

It's here at the headquarters of the National Park Authority

that the different points of view are evaluated and considered

as the final work on the national park plan is completed.

The national park plan is an important document.

It's our management document for the next five years.

It guides us and our partners.

It's on our website. It's through our Facebook page.

You can find it on Twitter.

Physical copies are in our offices and libraries.

It's the best way to get people together to see where we're going.

It's not just about the National Park Authority, it's about everyone involved in the park.

It's a great process for involving people.

Something that is important every five years to get right.

We do think there's a lot of scope for hydropower within the park,

particularly smaller schemes, run-of-the-river hydro schemes

that can be integrated into the landscape

and offer benefits to local estates and communities.

Indeed, a number of projects are under way within the park of that scale.

One such project is under construction on the Glenfalloch estate.

It started off, as all these things do,

with quite a lot of questioning

from the authorities about what we were planning to do,

the mess we might make on the hillside,

the impact it would have on the environment.

But they quickly came to understand that what we wanted to do

was to achieve the same objectives as them,

which was to have a good project with minimal impact on the environment.

That, I think, we've achieved.

The idea is we've piped water and as it drops 180 metres down the glen,

the pressure increases and the velocity increases the water.

When it comes down to the lower regions of the scheme,

the water comes through the pipe into the powerhouse behind us.

The pressure and speed of the water turns the turbine

then it falls back through the turbine and into the river.

In this scheme, we're using two kilometres of pipe.

This pipe behind me. That equates to 250 lengths connected together.

All the pipe is buried underground

and fully reinstated after the job is completed.

So we hope, within two or three years,

there will be no trace of the hydro scheme above ground.

Everyone in the Glen and in Crianlarich, and further afield,

who is employed or who has benefited from the work,

from the people working here, has been very, very supportive.

On a scheme of this size, we generally employ 15 men on average.

This rises to 20 to 25 men towards the end of the contract.

We hope to have this scheme finished in June 2012.

We hope in the future these schemes will escalate,

particularly in this area, as they're becoming more popular.

These estates in Scotland run on very low levels of income, historically.

The sort of income we would be able to create from the scheme when it's up and running

will be a complete game-changer in terms of the amount of income we get in

and, therefore, are able to plough back into the estate.

Working with Scottish Natural Heritage and the national park

to achieve their objectives in terms of environmental management and habitat development,

and also, for ourselves, in terms of doing the things we want to do -

maintenance on the estate and bringing the estate up to the place it should be.

So it would seem the plan has helped Glenfalloch estate build a future

that is in tune with the aspirations of the national park.

Back in 2002, the year the park started,

things were less clear for Captain David West.

Captain West had an inspiration - to use a seaplane to fly passengers in and out of Loch Lomond.

The market place was ready for it, it was something new and exciting.

We felt there was wide acceptance of the idea.

On the other hand, of course,

we had certain groups, certain people, who were very much against it.

Mostly because they didn't have the information.

Its green credentials are absolutely fantastic.

It needs no runway, the water's there.

We are just making use of a very natural part of the park.

It leaves nothing in the water. There's no bilge pumps. It doesn't discharge anything,

apart from it does have an engine and there is an exhaust on that engine.

The noise we went through, and we explained to people,

it was something like 30 to 40 seconds a day.

No more than, perhaps, motorbikes going past on the main road through the park.

The Friends Of Loch Lomond had a view to how the loch should be used

and a seaplane certainly wasn't part of that.

We tried to present to them at a meeting,

but, again, very closed ears and it really was not taking in the facts.

It was just, "We're not having the seaplane, that's the end of it."

The Friends did what they did a little bit at that time,

which is as a pressure group, a charity, without paid staff,

they took a look at the proposal and said, "Oh no, help!" and objected.

And objected, as I understand it, on almost every front,

without, perhaps, the detailed analysis of what the proposal really involved environmentally

for the tourism and visitors, which is something we want to support.

So there was a bit of a jerk-of-the-knee "we'll say no".

It would happen differently now in a number of ways.

Those pressure groups were pressuring the committee

on the national park and the planning department

and brought forward a lot of different hurdles we wouldn't have otherwise had.

The proposal for the seaplane

came early in the life of the national park, when it was just coming together as a park board.

No policies, no plan, et cetera. It was a difficult thing to deal with on the hoof, as it were.

Effectively, when the seaplane is on the loch, it's a boat,

so it has to abide by speed restrictions and everything

that other boat users have to do.

When it's in the air, it's governed by aviation regulations.

I think what's come out of this is we all need to be respectful of the park,

whether you're a walker, cleaning up, taking rubbish to the bin.

Whether you're running a two-stroke boat and considering going across to an electric engine.

We have all got to take responsibility and that's the way it should be.

So a happy landing in the end for David.

The rising price of gold has encouraged new investment

in an abandoned mine that was first opened in the 1980s.

But, in 2010, Scotgold's application to reopen the mine

at Cononish, near Tyndrum, was rejected by the National Park authority.

This came as a great disappointment to those in the village,

who believed the mine would bring a much-needed boost to the local economy.

When the National Park Authority recommended refusal,

some weeks before the hearing, that was devastating in itself.

The application was narrowly refused by 12 votes to ten

and largely on the grounds of landscape and visual impact.

Why is that part of Scotland in the national park?

Because it is a most beautiful and wonderful place. Ben Ledi, Cononish Glen, etc.

The developer knew the goldmine was in the national park

when they bought the rights to operate the mine.

If they had screwed their brains in and looked carefully, they would have realised

it was not an open-and-shut case as to whether they would get permission to operate.

The application was for a facility that would contain 800 tonnes of mining waste.

Our issues with that were the sheer scale of the structure in the glen,

which is a natural, semi-wild glen.

We also felt that the restoration proposals,

and the proposals to grow the vegetation back once the mine was closed, were not thought through.

We weren't convinced they would work.

A lot of noise was made about visual impact,

but who's being visually impacted?

I don't believe the critics spend very much time up there throughout the year.

The resource at Cononish contains around 160,000 ounces of gold,

and just under 600,000 ounces of silver.

That's worth, probably, £170-odd million at current prices.

The mine itself will provide 50 job for locals

and jobs at quite a high rate of pay relative to the tourist industry,

and even apprenticeships, career opportunities in hard-rock mining, for the young people,

which will tend to keep them here.

And, in some ways, it will counteract the cyclical nature of tourism,

with all that that entails.

If it's to be allowed to go ahead,

it must be done in the absolutely best, best way possible for the environment.

And, at the first planning hearing, we were quite unconvinced that was the case.

It was very disappointing that the application was refused.

Since then, we've worked constructively with the planning authority

to hopefully address the majority of their concerns.

We did continue to engage with Scotgold to discuss the issues that led to the refusal

and the main issues of concern.

That has led to a long process of Scotgold revising its proposals.

The main feature is that the tailings management facility

is now about half of the size than the previous one

and the design of it is far more sympathetic.

It has more rounded contours, it's generally smaller, lower profile.

The actual techniques to restore vegetation that replicates what's around it

have been taken more seriously this time.

We have had reassurances about the gold market and that the mine would operate constantly

for the ten-year period and would be off site within the time proposed.

But it will still be an operating mine with noise and activity in a quiet glen.

My personal experience of mines

is that there's no such thing as a green mine.

They have a very heavy impact on the environment.

And I just don't think that a national park,

when the national park has a remit to protect the environment in the national park...

Goldmines and national parks, to me, don't go together.

This thing is going to come and go

and there will be tremendous efforts to restore it to the original form.

And nature is a tremendous regenerator in its own right.

So I think it'll be a moment in time.

So what do you think?

Is there enough gold already in the world that we don't disturb this glen?

We can leave it in peace and quiet for the hill walkers to enjoy?

Or should we be using this mine to provide an income and jobs for the local community?

It's a big question to answer.

There are hundreds of big decisions that have to be made all the time.

I guess that's why we have the National Park Authority.

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