page_title: Cumbernauld
section_title: Environment
hierarchical_section_title: Cumbernauld / Environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Fannyside Loch, Cumbernauld Palacerigg Country Park just outside Cumbernauld has many great walks through the surrounding woodland and around the two lochs. This view is near the west end of the larger loch.
context_page_description: Cumbernauld is a large town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is the ninth most-populous locality in Scotland and the most populated town in north Lanarkshire, positioned in the centre of Scotland's Central Belt. Geographically, Cumbernauld sits between east and west, being on the Scottish watershed between the Forth and the Clyde; however, it is culturally far more weighted towards Glasgow and the New Town's planners thought to fill 80% of its houses from Scotland's largest city to reduce housing pressure there.
  Cumbernauld was marked by the Romans in antiquity. Traces of this are still visible today for example at Westerwood and, less conspicuously, north of the M80 where the legionaries surfaced what would later be called the Auld Cley Road. This is acknowledged in Cumbernauld Community Park, also site of Scotland's only visible open-air Roman altar, in the shadow of the imposing Carrickstone Water Tower.
  For many years Cumbernauld was chiefly populated around what is now called The Village with the medieval castle a short walk away surrounded by its own park grounds.
context_section_description: Cumbernauld consists of more than 50% green space, and was designed to incorporate green spaces as a resource for the community.
  The Scottish Wildlife Trust owns four wildlife reserves in the town – Cumbernauld Glen, Luggiebank Wood, Forest Wood, and Northside Wood. These habitats include ancient Oak forest (with attendant bluebell displays in early summer) and large areas of Scots Pine coverage.
  
  Cumbernauld (like Ben Lomond) lies on the Scottish watershed, the drainage divide which separates river systems that flow to the east from those that flow to the west. There are two main waterways which flow out of Cumbernauld: the Red Burn (from which the town's Gaelic name is derived) and the Luggie Water (immortalised by David Gray). The Red Burn flows through the Glen and there are walkways alongside this and the Bog Stank. 
  There is also a footpath along the Glencryan Burn with miles of pathways up towards Pallacerigg and Fannyside Lochs.
  Fannyside Muir, to the south of the town, is part of the Slamannan plateau, an area of 183 hectares of lowland bog.  This habitat is being restored by a variety of organisations including the national insect charity Buglife.  The plateau is designated as a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) and an SPA (Special Protection Area), partly because of its nationally important population of Taiga Bean Geese (Anser fabialis fabialis).
  There are a large number of parks, and there are also LNRs (Local Nature Reserves) and SINCs (Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation) owned and managed by North Lanarkshire Council. For example St. Maurice's Pond as a SINC and Ravenswood has a LNR. In 1993 Broadwood Loch, a balancing lake, was created by damming the Moss Water and using a plastic waterproof membrane, and a 6-metre (20 ft) wall to hold back the water. This was primarily to prevent flooding downstream but also for recreation.
  A landscape scale conservation partnership led by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, the Cumbernauld Living Landscape (CLL), operates in the town with the aim of enhancing, connecting and restoring the greenspaces and improving people's perceptions of and access to them.
  In 2014, the CLL obtained camera trap footage of Pine martens living in the woods within Cumbernauld and the return of this species (formerly extinct across the Central belt of Scotland) has become a central plank of the organisation's strategy to improve perceptions of nature in the town.
caption: Fannyside Lochs
exif: {}