Corrie Fee Consultation: Our Response

Dave Windle

I am replying to the above consultation on the Corrie Fee NNR Management Plan on behalf of the North East Mountain Trust -

We would like to first congratulate you on running a successful reserve. You have managed to achieve a good balance between encouraging people to visit and ensuring that the special natural features are conserved. In passing, we were pleased to see that you are considering supplementary feeding of eagles by leaving a few deer carcasses on the hill and will be very interested to find out how this develops. We would like to restrict our comments to two points as follows:-

1. There are some very good interpretation boards in the forested areas which are helpful and valuable. We would be against any proposals to erect such boards outwith forested areas as they would significantly detract from the present sense of wildness.
2. Your plan makes clear the importance of controlling herbivores in order to allow trees and shrubs to regenerate. However, when I was last there, I saw essentially no signs of recovery outside fenced areas. You mention working with the Caenlochan deer management group, which is unfortunate as the Caenlochan deer population appears to many as totally out of control. Indeed, this issue of excessive deer numbers across Scotland is now recognised as needing further action and has been discussed in Holyrood. In order to make deer management work, you need to specify numbers and we consider that these numbers need to be part of your management plan going forward.

We hope that these two comments are helpful.

David Windle (Chair of North East Mountain Trust)

Please let the webmaster know if there are problems with viewing these pages or with the links they contain.