Rural workers in the Cairngorms national park this week staged an online protest over a plan that they believe threatens their jobs and endangered species.

Members of Grampian Moorland Group organised ‘Protest in the Park’ against the Cairngorms National Park Authority Board’s draft plan for the next five years, which proposes changes to game bird management and advocates 'swingeing' deer culls on the park’s hills. Targets of 35,000 hectares of new forestry by 2045, mostly unfenced, are also in the draft.

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association was backing the action, in protest against the 'widening chasm' between park leaders and rural workers.

“We are protesting because the draft plan will make game businesses economically unviable, leading to job losses in the park,” said gamekeeper, Leslie George, of the GMG, who works in Donside.

“No one has seen any plan from the park’s board as to how they intend to replace lost jobs in our sector. We don’t feel the park is working for the people of the land any more. People in authority are pushing agendas, not the residents’. Game and farming sectors are being singled out.”

Read more: Cairngorms Park targets the game sector

He added: “The plan favours rewilding but no assessment has been done on how rewilding will support red-listed or declining species such as Curlew, mountain hares and Capercaillie in the Park. Where I am, in Donside, the plan says huge swathes should be planted in trees. What will that do to good farmland and food security? What does it mean for farming jobs in the area?

“Some estates are already exceeding Scottish Government tree planting targets and providing conservation, free of charge. This plan fails to acknowledge that progress at all.”

Scottish Gamekeepers Association chairman, Alex Hogg, has written to Park Convener, Xander McDade, asking for evidence that the proposed afforestation will definitely benefit Scotland’s quest to be Net Zero by 2045, with huge amounts of carbon already stored in existing land in the park.

“Whilst we agree with well considered tree planting, there is a lack of long-term data in general in Scotland about the carbon benefits of planting trees on organic rich soils," said Mr Hogg. "If we don’t know what is already there, how do we know if schemes are going to work or are even helpful?”