“JAMAHA Highland Estates works closely with motorcycle clubs in the area to facilitate the use of its land at Kinlochleven and other locations for competitions and official practices and indeed the company sponsors such activities. We are very happy to continue this community partnership.
Because some of the locations are Sites of Special Scientific Interest, we can only legally allow them to be used for each event by securing the consent of Scottish National Heritage (SNH), which is normally forthcoming.
However continued unauthorised use of the land by individual motorcyclists puts additional pressure on these environments and understandably makes such consent harder for us to obtain from SNH. The clubs are aware of this and are working hard to discourage motorcyclists from illegal use of these sensitive areas. We fully support them in this.”
Now, thrown into that mix riders on motorcycles, whether they are riding with care for the environment and estate or not, and we’ve got the potential for a clash between landowners and the motorsports community which isn’t going to end well for our beloved sports.
So far many of the affected land owners have been very flexible and forgiving in their approach to the problem with many understanding the the local clubs are well managed and are doing their level best to stamp out the problem but how far can that forgiveness be pushed? How long will it be before access to land starts to reduce? If you're riding off road without permission it's about time to stop it before the sports you love disappear.
We spoke with the Jamaha Highland Estates and they very clearly laid out the problem not only related to the estate but also concerns related to the offices and permissions from Scottish National Heritage (SNH) over which they have no control...