A new campaign encouraging people to help look after Scotland’s most iconic and popular mountains, has been launched on Conic Hill in Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park
The ‘Adopt a Path’ campaign is part of a major £6.1 million project – The Mountains & The People – and is launched on its one year anniversary. The campaign asks volunteers who go hillwalking to adopt a favourite hill route in Scotland’s National Parks that they will inspect when they go walking and then report back on the condition of their adopted path. The aim is to create an army of volunteers who detect damage on paths in the National Parks early, so that maintenance money and effort can be targeted and effective.
Stretching for 1,800 square kilometres with a stunning combination of lochs, mountains, forests and glens, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park is among Scotland’s busiest countryside attracting four million visitors annually. Iconic Ben Lomond and The Cobbler are just two of the 23 mountains in Loch Lomond & The Trossachs that will benefit from the ambitious project.
Cairngorms National Park meanwhile boasts Britain’s highest and largest mountain range and at 4,528 sq km is the largest of all the UK’s 15 National Parks. Beinn A Ghlo, just off the A9 is one of the mountaineer must-dos that will see prolonged, sustained damage repaired using techniques pioneered by COAT during the now complete, four-year £2.1m Cairngorms Mountain Heritage Project.
‘The Mountains & The People’ project represents the coming together of Scotland’s two National Parks to work on a scale never previously attempted. The project brings together a mix of training, volunteering, education and contract work that helps truly connect people with the mountains in Scotland’s National Parks, whilst tackling the impacts of recreational access on our most iconic mountain paths. The project will also run a series of 6-month traineeships based in each National Park, training 36 people across this five year project.
Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham said: “The ‘Adopt a Path’ campaign is an exciting opportunity for people to play a role as volunteer path inspectors on their favourite hillwalking routes in Scotland’s National Parks. I encourage all hillwalkers to adopt a path and help protect some of Scotland’s most iconic landscapes.”
For further information on how to ‘Adopt a Path’ becoming or to get involved in conservation with ‘The Mountains & The People’ check out the website at www.themountainsandthepeople.org.uk.
