This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter

How much do we care about preserving this thing we sometimes call ‘wildness’? The Ryvoan bothy, though 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 Lochan Uaine, has become the focus of an objection to a 22.5 m high phone mast proposed some 400m away.

That mast plan has now halted, with the announcement today that the planning application has been withdrawn.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 £1 billion plan to provide phone coverage across the country.

I’ve stopped, but not stayed, at Ryvoan, several 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. It is a memorable landmark, making it a good focus for objection.

It’s also not surprising that the Ryvoan mast was so objected to. The telecoms 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........

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