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How much do we care about preserving this thing we sometimes call ‘wildness’? The Ryvoan bothy, though itself a human structure, has become a symbol for a fight to protect a little bit of the wild. The small red-roofed refuge on a path through the Cairngorms not far from one of its most iconic lochs, An Loch Uaine, has become the focus of an objection to a 22.5 m high phone mast proposed some 400m away.
That plan has now halted, with the announcement today that the planning application has been withdrawn. Over 500 objections on the Cairngorms National Park planning portal make it the most objected to phone mast on the Shared Rural Network, the UK Government’s £1billion plan to provide phone coverage across the country.
I’ve stopped, but not stayed, at Ryvoan, quite a number of times myself, on walks past the emerald waters of An Lochan Uaine and a hike up nearby Meall a' Bhuachaill - with teenagers in a blast of February sleet and wind. A bothy is not always a place to stay, but a marker, a pause on the way. The bothy is memorable making it a good focus for objection.
It’s not surprising that the Ryoan mast was so objected to. The structure, of course, was not planned for just anywhere. It was proposed for within the Cairngorms National Park, which has, in its landscape policy, a presumption against “any development that does not conserve or enhance the landscape character and special landscape qualities of the Cairngorms National Park including wildness and the setting of the proposed development.”
The National Park, it should be noted, also doesn’t permit wind farm developments and is largely free of large-scale electricity structure following the removal of 46 pylons and the burying of cables underground - which has its own environmental impact.The story of Ryovan got me wondering if my instinctive opposition to wilderness phone masts is at odds with my support for new powerlines and wind turbines.
 An Lochan Uaine (Image: The Cairngorms National Park)The real question around such masts is whether we need them. Masts in such wild places are the result of a strategy that revolves around a geographical coverage target that focuses on land area rather than the needs of local communities. They are the result of a plan that sees the land in terms of “total not spots”, areas that need to be filled whether there are people in them or not.
Some argue that such masts are needed for safety reasons, to allow for emergency calls, but others point out that new smartphone technology will soon make them obsolete.
The Ryvoan phone mast is not the first to fuel objections and won’t be the last. A movement is growing against phone masts in wild places. I covered the issue earlier this year, when Torridon Mast Action Group and the Torridon and Kinlochewe Community Council wrote a letter to the UK Minister of Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure by calling for a “serious” rethink of the £1 billion Shared Rural Network.
The letter said such masts will “despoil some of our most remote and beautiful landscapes and cause significant environmental damage.”
Chair of the Torridon and Kinlochewe Community Council, Caroline Hamilton said: "Often they are being planned in areas that appear to be useless to the community -- up remote glens, up the tops of mountains - and this is in some of the most iconic and beautiful parts of the Highlands, ruining the very reason that people choose to live in and visit the area."
Among those who objected to the Ryvoan mast were Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) the RSPB, Mountaineering Scotland and John Muir Trust. A news article on the APRS site today, said, “We had objected to this proposed location, close to the bothy and in a remote area of the Cairngorms very popular with hill walkers and mountaineers and an important habitat for Capercaillie and other rare species.”
For APRS this would have had “an unacceptable impact on this special place”. Dr Kat Jones, Director of APRS said “As well as being a prime example of Scotland’s upland habitats, Ryvoan has a particular place in the hearts of those who love the mountains. Ryvoan bothy has been the starting point for many a mountain adventure and the experience of coming up the path from Glenmore and then out into the expanse of mountains is really special.”
The withdrawal, as well as the mounting wider campaign against phone masts in the wilder parts of Scotland, is a reminder of the strong feelings there are around what we call “the wild” and our sense of what should and should not be there. The wild is rarely about no impact, but rather minimal impact.
On one level the objection to masts is similar to opposition to wind farms and pylons in wild places - an opposition movement with which I feel less affinity. The difference here is that when weighing up the necessity versus the need and desire to maintain some places as somewhat ‘wild’, and more free of human infrastructure, the phone mast seems less necessary.
The Ryvoan mast seems particularly so because coverage is partially achieved by another phone mast at Lanchoil. As one objector put it: “The developer has not updated their coverage modelling to include the mast at Lanchoil, this would have been a critical update as it would demonstrate the lack of need for this mast.”
READ MORE: Highland phone masts will cost millions. Will anyone benefit?
Dr Jones said: “There are other masts being proposed in remote hill-areas of Scotland to achieve the same hollow targets, which don’t focus on benefit to people and businesses, but rather geographical coverage alone. We, with communities and other charities, are calling for a rethink which protects our landscapes and special places.”
Of course, the bothy itself is a built structure in nature. It is a piece of the non-wild within the grand sweep of a landscape which is not entirely free of shaping by humans. But it a bothy is also a symbol of the wild, of the minimum needed by those walking and moving through it. No more than shelter and some bare boards for the night.
A phone mast is the opposite. As, some might say, is a turbine or a pylon (neither of which are being proposed in the Cairngorms, but are planned for many other remote parts of Scotland).
And all of this brings me back to my earlier question about whether its possible to support pylons but oppose masts.
I think so - and it revolves around necessity.
Electric infrastructure represents the basics, the central mechanism, through which we reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some may argue that there are ways to achieve this without pylons and turbines - and most likely point to reduced consumption. But it's hard to find other viable and practical options and hence pylons nevertheless come with a signifcant weight of necessity. Such infrastructure is like our bothy in the storm of climate change - the vital minimum structure we can’t do without.
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