A campaign to raise £300k for essential mountain path repairs has achieved 73% of its funding target in its first 12 months.
Mountaineering Scotland and the Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland (OATS) launched 'It's Up To Us' in 2023 for the upkeep of walkways on the nation's peaks, with the initial phase focused on repairing 3.2km of badly eroded path on An Teallach.
In the year since £218k has been raised, and contractors from Cairngorm Wilderness Contracts (CWC) have so far completed 340m of path building and maintenance work on the mountain.
The three-year campaign has received donations from the Scottish Mountaineering Trust, European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA), and other charitable trusts (£154,858), a major private donor (£25,000), the general public (£24,996), commercial donations (£7,550) and mountaineering and hillwalking clubs (£5,900).
As the campaign enters its second year, Mountaineering Scotland and OATS are issuing a further appeal to all hill path users, outdoor and conservation businesses, organisations, and charities who care deeply about the conservation of the hills they use and love to support the campaign and help them reach the £300,000 required to complete the An Teallach project.
The campaign is also calling on government to help develop a sustainable funding model for building and maintenance work across Scotland’s upland path network to ensure it is kept fit for purpose for future generations.
Walking tourism is estimated to be worth around 1.6 billion per year to the Scottish economy. However, there is no government funding for path work on privately owned land, 83% of paths in Scotland, that is not in the two national parks or NGO estates.
Post-Brexit, EU funding that was previously accessible to private landowners has been lost and not replaced.
CEO of the Outdoor Access Trust Scotland CEO, Dougie Baird, said: “It has been an encouraging start to the It's Up To Us fundraising campaign, with a great response from charitable trusts in particular.
"We are hugely grateful for all our individual public donors and will be encouraging other hill users to follow their fine example in the coming year to help fix the badly eroded path on this iconic mountain.”
Mountaineering Scotland CEO, Stuart Younie, said: “It’s been great to see the progress we have made over the last year since launching It’s Up to Us. Many thanks to all the people and organisations who have either contributed financially, helped us to raise the profile of the campaign or volunteered to repair the path on An Teallach.
“We are very grateful for all the support we have received and are well on our way to reaching our target but there is still a lot more to do to deliver our ambition of establishing a sustainable funding model to support the maintenance and upkeep of our mountain paths. An Teallach is one of many mountains in Scotland that needs our support and it’s up to all of us to do something about it.”
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