Masterplan for national park

Proposal to marry conservation, visitor experience and rural development

A five-year plan to drive visitors into the Cairngorms National Park and protect its stunning landscape has been unveiled.

The important document details how bosses plan to marry conservation, visitor experience and rural development.

Proposals include increasing woodland expansion by 5,000 hectares and restoring a similarly sized area of peatland by 2022.

They include investment in key visitor infrastructure and projects such as the Deeside and Speyside Way extensions.

And they detail the investment that will be made in the creation of the snow roads scenic scheme, between Blairgowrie and Grantown, which aims to replicate the success of the North Coast 500.

The Cairngorms have seen visitor numbers rise by more than 300,000 a year since the turn of the year and it is hoped maximising the stunning scenery and roads will help boost their numbers even further.

Included elsewhere in the masterplan is the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s (CNPA) intention to make the area a more attractive place in which to live.

It has targeted delivery of 200 new affordable houses by 2022 and will also back Cairngorms Community Broadband as it bids to deliver superfast broadband in the hardest to reach parts of the park.

Efforts will also be made to improve visitor amenities and boost volunteering opportunities to ensure everyone can enjoy the park.

The proposals have been put forward following a 14-week consultation held last summer to which hundreds of organisations and individuals responded.

CNPA chief executive Grant Moir said: “There has been an incredible amount of work gone into developing the next National Park Partnership Plan – not only from our staff but from all the partners who have contributed and, of course, the public who took the time to respond to last year’s consultation.

“This is a national park for everyone so it is important that people feel that they have had their say.

“I think that the NPPP addresses a lot of the concerns and comments that were fed back to us and I think we are setting the park on the right course with a good balance between conservation, visitor experience and rural development.”

The board of the CNPA will consider the plan at a meeting on Friday. The final decision rests with Scottish ministers.