Item6Appendix2SupportingStatement20190347DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 6 Appendix 2 13/12/2019

AGENDA ITEM 6

APPENDIX 2

2019/0347/DET

SUP­PORT­ING STATEMENT

1504 Archi­tec­tur­al & BUILD­ING CON­SULTANCY Bish­ops Well Cot­tage Dal­guise Dunkeld Perth­shire PH8 0JX

SUP­PORT­ING STATEMENT

Cli­ent — Bal­avil Estate

Site Address – Bal­avil Estate, Kin­gussie, Inverness-shire, PH21 1LU.

Pro­ject – Install­a­tion of forest tracks at Croft­car­noch Forest Plant­a­tion (In retrospect)

Back­ground Bal­avil estate extends to approx­im­ately 7500acres (3000ha), access across the estate is served in the main by a single spin­al hill road/​private way of approx 12km(7.5miles) in length from the main estate hold­ings to the River Dul­nan in the north west of the estate. The Estate has pro­posed a net­work of track upgrades across its land to facil­it­ate the future land man­age­ment object­ives, which include thin­ning the dense, nat­ive-spe­cies plant­a­tion wood­lands, des­ig­nat­ing vast tracts of man­aged moor­land for nat­ive tree plant­ing, leav­ing areas fal­low to rewild and regen­er­ate nat­ur­ally, increas­ing deer man­age­ment fur­ther in these areas to elim­in­ate brows­ing in order to encour­age nat­ive flora to flour­ish. Per­mis­sion was gran­ted by High­land Coun­cil in Novem­ber 2016 by way of Pri­or Noti­fic­a­tion & Pri­or Approv­al (Ref No 16/04569/PNO)that approx 7km (4.4miles) be repaired and improved. This work has now suc­cess­fully been com­pleted. Fur­ther works to improve the same track extend­ing to the River Dul­nain are now under­way, work­ing closely in con­junc­tion with the CNPA. Fur­ther applic­a­tions have since been applied for track resur­fa­cing works at Ken­nels wood­land plant­a­tions and area known as Juni­per south of Cre­ag Bhalg. Work to a par­tially-con­struc­ted track which fol­lows the north and west peri­met­ers of Croft­car­noch Plant­a­tion has com­menced pri­or to plan­ning con­sent being granted.

Sec­tion of Track await­ing final sur­face treatment

Jus­ti­fic­a­tions The spe­cif­ic long-term object­ive of the Estate is to expand the nat­ur­ally regen­er­at­ing wood­land of Cre­ag Bheag with a nat­ive spe­cies plant­ing régime around Cre­ag Bhalg (in asso­ci­ation with Trees for Life please see cor­res­pond­ence attached). A fur­ther phase of forest/​woodland expan­sion involves thin­ning out the dense Scot’s pine plant­a­tion wood­land util­ising the Croft­car­noch track and, fol­low­ing a peri­od of increased deer man­age­ment on Cre­ag Bhuidhe and across the lower reaches of the Estate, allow­ing the open areas of moor­land on Cre­ag Bhuidhe (Craigbui Wood) to rewild and regen­er­ate naturally.

Fur­ther­more, it has been iden­ti­fied that large area with­in Croft­car­noch forest plant­a­tion has an undu­lated rocky out­crop which would be dif­fi­cult for a for­ward machine or har­vester to nego­ti­ate. The tracks around the peri­met­er would allow dir­ect access and egress from any point for the afore­men­tioned neg­at­ing the need to take con­vo­luted routes through the forest to carry out thin­ning works and extrac­tion etc.

Bal­avil Rocky out­crop restrict­ing access to north­ern trees Boggy area that restricts access

Descrip­tion Iino sec­tion of forest track at Croft­car­noch is primar­ily iden­ti­fied as being sought for plan­ning approv­al. Total dis­tance — 1.7km or thereby.

Cre­ag­bui Wood­land Cre­ag Bhalg Croft­camoch Plantation

Meth­ods of Con­struc­tion The guidelines as set out by Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­ages Con­struc­ted Tracks in the Scot­tish High­lands (2015 edi­tion), also Good Prac­tise in Design, Con­struc­tion & Use of float­ing roads in Peat (Aug 2010) and SEPA advise on Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion and Envir­on­ment­al man­age­ment. Flood risk, sur­face water drain­age and water engin­eer­ing works. Bor­row pits and Res­tor­a­tion and hab­it­at enhance­ment are to be fol­lowed dur­ing the plan­ning, design and con­struc­tion phase of the works. Works to con­struct the track would require the use of a 13 tonne tracked excav­at­or to min­im­ise wheel mark­ings and assist com­pac­tion, a 10 tonne wheeled dump­er and a vibrat­ing roller. A stone crush­er may be required on a load­er for grad­ing mater­i­al onsite. All plant and vehicles will be refuelled using on board pumps from bun­ded grab tanks to elim­in­ate the risk of spills. A spill kit will be car­ried on site at all times. It is planned that the Croft­car­noch track works are to be com­pleted by the same con­tract­or whom has car­ried out the works on the pre­vi­ously approved hill tracks lead­ing to the Dul­nain River, which have sub­sequently been over seen by CNPA dur­ing the work­ing stages.

A short sec­tion of steep­er track has been con­struc­ted along the mid sec­tion of the Croft­car­noch track where the gradi­ent falls out­with that of the guid­ance of the SNH, It was decided that a short­er point to point sec­tion of track which min­im­ised the visu­al and eco­lo­gic­al impact on the Crae­g­Bui wood­land land­scape would out­weigh that of hav­ing to devi­ate from the fence line of Croft­car­noch forest with an elong­ated arrange­ment of S bends to ascend/​decend the gradi­ent. The Estate appre­ci­ate that any ​‘wash out’ or track erosions through vehicle and weath­er dam­age will be con­tinu­ally taken care of as part of the ongo­ing maintenances.

Fur­ther­more a spur track of approx 100m in length or so has been cre­ated from the mid sec­tion at the highest point of the track head­ing north into the Cre­ag­bui Wood­land which ser­vices exist­ing pheas­ant feed­ers. As Bal­avil is also recog­nised as a Sport­ing Estate, the need to ser­vice loc­a­tions around the estate such as these with min­im­al access/​egress issues for per­son­nel has been taken into con­sid­er­a­tion as part the new track planning.

For the most part of this exist­ing track mater­i­al will be obtained from ​‘win­ning’ on site, from shal­low bor­row pits which run par­al­lel to the upper most side of the track or from the mater­i­al cur­rently con­tained with­in the exist­ing tracks. This meth­od effi­ciently removes the require­ment for haul­ing large quant­it­ies of impor­ted mater­i­al long dis­tances from the pub­lic roads into the site.

Example of exist­ing hill track con­struc­tion at Bal­avil Estate Cul­verts have to be installed/​reinstated at vari­ous loc­a­tions to take drain­ing water away from the track. These will be placed at exist­ing sur­face water cross­ings to improve and main­tain the sur­face of the track by the use of large dia­met­er pip­ing. Twin walled pipe at either 450 or 600mm dia­met­er with silt trap and splash stone detail­ing at each ingress and out­let. All care­fully uplif­ted turfs will be laid aside for rein­state­ment onto bare sur­faces to encour­age regrowth. Par­al­lel bor­row pit drain­age cross­ings will be installed at max 150m centres at loc­a­tions to suit the exist­ing topography.

Any bor­row pits which are pro­posed to be shal­low dish shaped excav­a­tions these will not be cut into the hill, as per the recom­mend­a­tions set out by SNH ​‘Con­struc­ted Tracks in the Scot­tish High­lands’. All uplif­ted turfs will be laid aside for rein­state­ment over the sur­face of the bor­row pit imme­di­ately after excavation.

Note — All uplif­ted turfs should be rein­stated with­in 72 hours of excav­a­tion oth­er­wise a meth­od of hydra­tion should be used to main­tain suf­fi­cient mois­ture con­tent in the turf.

Track Sec­tion await­ing final surface

Com­pleted Turn­ing circle (east end of track) Pro­posed Mater­i­als • • • Onsite mater­i­als won from par­al­lel bor­row pits; gen­er­ally all won, graded and worked with­in the cir­cum­fer­ence of the excav­at­or. Sub­si­di­ary mater­i­als from sau­cer bor­row pits. Lar­ger boulders brought up and laid aside for use at water­course cul­verts. Cul­verts — 450/​600/​900mm dia­met­er twin wall plastic pipe.

Design — Asso­ci­ated Doc­u­ments • • • 1:25000 loc­a­tion plan 1:7500 site plan – inc delin­eation of the track and areas of spe­cif­ic fea­tures 1:2500 site plan – identi­fy­ing woodland/​forestry areas with­in estate • Con­struc­tion Details – Typ­ic­al pro­file of track con­struc­tion inc. shal­low bor­row pit chan­nel • Eco­lo­gic­al Report by Enviro Centre • Sup­port­ing Cor­res­pond­ence from Trees for Life • Wood­land Regen­er­a­tion Over­view Plan • Forestry Com­mis­sion Felling/​thinning License 2019