02 May It’s Up to Us campaign & An Teallach featured on BBC Scotland’s Landward Programme
It’s Up to Us, our joint campaign with Mountaineering Scotland to raise awareness of the urgent need for investment in repairing and maintaining mountain paths across Scotland that will protect the fragile mountain environment for future generations, was featured on the BBC Scotland Landward programme.
Dougie Vipond heads to An Teallach to meet Stuart Younie, CEO of Mountaineering Scotland, Ewan Watson, Project Manager at OATS, and Julian Digby and his team of specialist path builders from Cairngorm Wilderness Contracts.
It is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer:
With increased footfall and the effects of extreme weather, many upland paths and the surrounding habitat are more badly eroded and falling into disrepair. With access to European funding now lost, there is currently no public investment from the Scottish or UK Government to support essential mountain path or habitat repair and restoration work for the vast majority of Scotland’s hills and mountains which are on land that is privately owned (ie not in a national park or on land owned by an NGO like John Muir Trust or National Trust for Scotland).
There are three parts to It’s Up to Us:
- Fundraising – We have a target of £300,000 for the project to repair 3.2km of badly eroded path and surrounding habitat on An Teallach, one of Scotland’s most iconic mountains in the NW Highlands. It is a prime example of a very popular mountain path on private land where there is no funding available for path repair.
- We are asking hillwalkers, climbers, snowsports enthusiasts, trail runners and anyone who loves and regularly uses mountain paths to give something back so that our mountains can continue to be enjoyed by future generations, and to demonstrate what can be achieved with the support of the mountaineering community.
- Awareness raising – Many of us take paths for granted, and don’t realise that there is very little funding available for upland paths. We aim to raise the profile of the need for sustainable investment into upland paths, their importance for tourism, the economy and the health and wellbeing of those that use them.
- Government action – We will engage with Government, stakeholder agencies and organisations, businesses, individual and commercial users, private landowners, and all path users to develop a long-term, sustainable funding model that will improve access to investment into upland paths, especially those on privately owned land.
How much does it cost to repair a mountain path?
- £5 – Gloves and eye protection for volunteers and contractors
- £10 – 1 ton bag of aggregate / hardcore
- £20 – 1 metre of ditch
- £100 – 1 metre of gravel path
- £200 – 1 metre of stone pitching
- £300 – Building a water bar
- £500 – Building a cross drain
- £1200-£1400/hour – material lifts with a helicopter
Please donate what you can when you can – https://savemountainpaths.scot/donate/. Every pound makes a big difference.