Fly-tippers have dumped tonnes of industrial waste at an historic Perthshire forest.
Huge piles of broken furniture, fixtures and other trash – including an old TV – have appeared at the entrance of Taymount Woods, north of Stanley.
The mess is believed to have come from a business or house renovation.
Forestry and Land Scotland, which manages the site on behalf of Scottish Government ministers, is now taking action to have the site cleared.
Councillor Angus Forbes, Pert and Kinross Council’s environment and infrastructure convener, said: “This is an absolutely shocking situation and clearly the result of significant home or office renovations.
“It enforces a point I have made previously, that if you are employing trades people to carry out work for you, it is important to make sure that they are disposing of the waste responsibly.
“I am taking advice from officers at the moment on the best way to deal with this type of activity and how we can prosecute people.”
He said: “This may appear to be a low level crime, and in some ways it is, but this is still a crime and it costs the public purse dearly.”
It follows news earlier this month that criminal fly-tippers have been going unpunished in Perth and Kinross for at least nine years.
The local authority pledged to get tough on fly-tippers after a Freedom of Information probe found that no one had been prosecuted in the area since 2010, despite 3,728 complaints to the environmental health team.
The latest statistics showed only two fixed penalty notices had been issued in Angus since 2010 and it was revealed last week only 140 people had faced action in Fife, despite 5,409 reports of flytipping.
A Forestry and Land Scotland spokesman said: “Fly-tipping is an antisocial behaviour of the worst sort. It spoils a location for visitors, can endanger widlife and potentially watercourses, and it means that we have to divert limited resources – that could be far better used elsewhere – to clearing it up.”
The 380-acre Taymount Woods estate is protected in some areas by CCTV.
The woods is now at the centre of a community buy-out campaign. A group of residents formed the West Stormont Woodland Group to investigate and fundraise to take-over both Taymount Woods and nearby Five Mile Wood under a Community Asset Transfer Scheme.
Both sites were offered for sale last year as part of a review of forests across Scotland.
