CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 4 – 11^th Septem­ber 2020

EAST CAIRNGORMS MOOR­LAND PARTNERSHIP

FOR DIS­CUS­SION & INFORMATION

Title: EAST CAIRNGORMS MOOR­LAND PARTNERSHIP

Pre­pared by: PETE MAY­HEW, DIR­ECT­OR OF CON­SER­VA­TION AND VIS­IT­OR EXPER­I­ENCE & JOS MIL­NER, ECMP OFFICER

Pur­pose

This paper reviews the pro­gress of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP) to date, as well as con­sid­er­ing its future development.

Recom­mend­a­tion

The Board is asked to:

a) note the pro­gress of the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship and; b) con­sider its future development.

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EAST CAIRNGORMS MOOR­LAND PART­NER­SHIP – FOR DIS­CUS­SION & INFORMATION

Stra­tegic Context

1. The East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship (ECMP) was set up in 2015 to become the focus for a land­scape-scale col­lab­or­a­tion between CNPA and 6 large sport­ing estates. The estates are Bal­mor­al, Glenavon, Glen­liv­et, Inver­cauld, Mar and Mar Lodge, which togeth­er cov­er 138,000 ha, about 30% of the Park.

2. The ECMP aims to deliv­er pub­lic bene­fits along­side private interests through ​“sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment”. The Part­ner­ship is a fun­da­ment­al ele­ment of the first (Sup­port­ing land­scape-scale col­lab­or­a­tion) and third (Moor­land man­age­ment) con­ser­va­tion pri­or­it­ies of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. In addi­tion, ECMP object­ives around peat­land res­tor­a­tion, wood­land expan­sion and pri­or­ity spe­cies con­ser­va­tion are import­ant com­pon­ents of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan. These object­ives are also key responses to the Cli­mate Emer­gency declared by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and con­trib­ute to CNPA’s response to the Biod­iversity Crisis.

Achieve­ments to Date

1. Moor­land man­age­ment should enable moor­land veget­a­tion com­munit­ies and spe­cies of con­ser­va­tion value to per­sist along­side those of sport­ing interest. ECMP has been tak­ing stock of the cur­rent situ­ation, in order to identi­fy where to focus efforts and to meas­ure improve­ments. This has included mon­it­or­ing of moun­tain hares, moor­land rap­tors and wader breed­ing pro­ductiv­ity, as well as identi­fy­ing and quan­ti­fy­ing areas of degraded peat­land, areas of moor­land that should not be burnt and areas of exist­ing and poten­tial wood­land expansion.

2. With­in the ECMP, wood­land cur­rently accounts for about 10% of the land area. Wood­land cov­er has increased by around 1,500 ha dur­ing the past 10 years, and a fur­ther 2,000−3,000 ha of wood­land expan­sion is cur­rently com­mit­ted to. Much of this will be by nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion but some plant­ing is also planned. In addi­tion, approx­im­ately 1,000 ha of low dens­ity wood­land and lone trees have recently been iden­ti­fied with­in ECMP from aer­i­al images.

3. By the end of 2018, peat­land res­tor­a­tion work had been car­ried out on nearly 700 ha of degraded peat­land on ECMP estates, which cor­res­ponds to an estim­ated sav­ing of 8,667 tonnes of CO₂ per year. Dur­ing 2019, five pro­jects, on four estates (Mar, Inver­cauld, Mar Lodge & Bal­mor­al), cov­er­ing 267 ha were awar­ded fund­ing from Peat­land Action but a lack of con­tract­or capa­city meant that only two pro­jects star­ted and winter weath­er has pre­ven­ted the com­ple­tion of both of these. All five pro­jects are being car­ried for­ward and new pro­jects will be developed with Glenavon, Bal­mor­al (Del­nadamph) and Glen­liv­et estates.

4. Muir­burn, car­ried out in line with best prac­tice, can improve hab­it­at for grouse and oth­er spe­cies such as moun­tain hare, how­ever, if car­ried out badly, it can have sig­ni­fic­antly adverse effects on the envir­on­ment. ECMP keep­ers and CNPA staff met for a joint muir­burn train­ing and dis­cus­sion day in March 2019 and ECMP has been apply­ing the Muir­burn Code to identi­fy and map areas that are inap­pro­pri­ate for burn­ing. This exer­cise has been use­ful for high­light­ing areas of dry, degraded bog hab­it­at that may be dif­fi­cult to recog­nise on the ground as deep peat, as well as steep slopes over 27 degrees. Ground in either of these cat­egor­ies should not be burnt. Around a third of the 88,000 ha of moor­land is cur­rently under rota­tion­al muir­burn across ECMP. This fig­ure may be revised as maps of peat depth improve.

5. Breed­ing wader pop­u­la­tions across Bri­tain, and indeed Europe, have declined markedly in recent dec­ades. How­ever, areas of moor­land man­aged for grouse shoot­ing and adja­cent rough pas­ture have been iden­ti­fied as per­sist­ing strong­holds for waders, due to factors includ­ing pred­at­or con­trol and lim­ited agri­cul­tur­al intens­i­fic­a­tion. Togeth­er with Brit­ish Trust for Orni­tho­logy (BTO), ECMP estates have been mon­it­or­ing wader pop­u­la­tions and breed­ing pro­ductiv­ity in order to bet­ter under­stand the causes of breed­ing fail­ure on keepered ground. Over 2 years, estate staff have car­ried out tran­sects at 33 sites and found and mon­itored 183 wader nests using nest tem­per­at­ure log­gers and wild­life cam­er­as. Of these nests, 54% of Lap­wing, 65% of Oyster­catch­er and 75% of Cur­lew hatched suc­cess­fully. Just under half of all nest fail­ures were due to pred­a­tion, while abandonment/​poor weath­er accoun­ted for a third of fail­ures and agri­cul­tur­al oper­a­tions and live­stock caused the remain­ing quarter of fail­ures. Con­trary to pre­vi­ous stud­ies, no sig­ni­fic­ant effect of prox­im­ity to wood­land cov­er on nest suc­cess was found.

6. Scot­tish Par­lia­ment has recently voted to afford the moun­tain hare pro­tec­ted spe­cies status, although this will only come into effect fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion. It is likely that a licens­ing sys­tem will be intro­duced so hav­ing good year to year inform­a­tion on hare pop­u­la­tions will be essen­tial. In order to improve data col­lec­tion, SNH has pub­lished a recom­men­ded pro­tocol for moun­tain hare mon­it­or­ing and GWCT has been rolling this out, par­tic­u­larly on grouse moors. Fol­low­ing train­ing by GWCT, ECMP keep­ers sur­veyed 10 sites cov­er­ing a total area of 40 sq. km in 2018, increas­ing to 14 sites (56 sq. km) in ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀. Count­ing at night with lamps or thermal ima­ging equip­ment, an aver­age of 16 hares per km were encountered in 2018 and 11 per km in ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀. These fig­ures com­pare favour­ably with those pub­lished by SNH and oth­er Scot­tish sites coun­ted using the same meth­od­o­logy. The decline in num­bers between years is in line with expect­a­tion from the cyc­lic nature of moun­tain hare populations.

7. Rap­tor mon­it­or­ing is being car­ried out in col­lab­or­a­tion with Rap­tor Study Groups, estate staff and con­sult­ants. This sug­gests a baseline of around 50 pairs of ​‘moor­land rap­tors’ (golden eagle, per­eg­rine, hen har­ri­er and mer­lin) with­in ECMP. Non­ethe­less hab­it­at and prey avail­ab­il­ity should sup­port more. A big chal­lenge for ECMP part­ners is to find ways of improv­ing the con­ser­va­tion status of moor­land rap­tors, along with oth­er red and amber moor­land bird species.

Future Devel­op­ments

1. Peat­land res­tor­a­tion and wood­land expan­sion are key responses to the Cli­mate Emer­gency. The Peat­land Action team are due to have great­er con­trol of their budget going for­wards which will allow longer-term plan­ning of pro­jects. Part­ners are dis­cuss­ing a suit­able tar­get for the res­tor­a­tion of degraded peat­land with ECMP, with a pro­pos­al of around 430 ha per year over the next 25 years. Meth­ods of lever­ing private invest­ment into both wood­land expan­sion and peat­land res­tor­a­tion are also being explored.

2. Recent research has indic­ated the sort of levels of wood­land expan­sion that are neces­sary for achiev­ing net zero in the Cairngorms and this will need to be factored in to ongo­ing dis­cus­sion with ECMP part­ners. The expan­sion of scrub hab­it­ats, a rare eco­tone between wood­land and moor­land favour­ing juni­per and wil­lows (includ­ing rare mont­ane spe­cies), is one way of achiev­ing great­er struc­tur­al hab­it­at diversity with a lower impact on grouse shoot­ing and on wader hab­it­at. Fund­ing is being sought for two pro­posed pro­jects. Ripari­an plant­ing pro­jects are also being under­taken by ECMP estates. These have the added bene­fit of provid­ing much-needed shade for water­courses, in which sum­mer water tem­per­at­ures are com­prom­ising sal­mon, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels and oth­er aquat­ic life. In addi­tion, ripari­an trees enhance nutri­ent levels and bene­fit aquat­ic inver­teb­rates, which in turn sup­port juven­ile salmon.

3. ECMP estates act­ing as an exem­plar of good moor­land man­age­ment in the Park will be key to the partnership’s future suc­cess. Dis­cus­sion is ongo­ing with the part­ners as to how best prac­tice can be taken for­ward with­in ECMP on issues such as muir­burn, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and great­er hab­it­at struc­tur­al diversity.

4. ECMP estates are con­tinu­ing to mon­it­or wader tran­sects. Fund­ing from SNH’s Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund will enable wader hab­it­at improve­ments to be made on 4 estates this autumn, focus­ing on cut­ting rushes and dig­ging wader scrapes. The mon­it­or­ing tran­sects will provide a meas­ure of the suc­cess of these hab­it­at changes.

Dr Jos Milner Dr Pete Mayhew August 2020 petermayhew@​cairngorms.​co.​uk