CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 3 Annex | 11^th June 2021

DRAFT — Cairngorm Nature Action Plan Mid-Term report

Intro­duc­tion

1. The Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2019 – 2024 was launched at Holyrood in Feb­ru­ary 2019. It is a five year plan and this year is approach­ing the half way point. The actions with­in the plan, delivered by a wide range of part­ners, are the prin­ciple vehicle for the col­lect­ive and coordin­ated con­ser­va­tion of hab­it­ats and spe­cies with­in the Nation­al Park.
2. The plan is integ­rated with­in an estab­lish hier­archy of nation­al and region­al strategies and policies, as per the table below, and is CNPA’s con­tri­bu­tion to the deliv­ery of the Scot­tish Biod­iversity Strategy and Biod­iversity Duty.

SCOT­TISH BIOD­IVERSITY STRATEGY – 6 BIG STEPS FOR NATURE
1. Eco­sys­tem Restoration
2. Invest­ment in Nat­ur­al Capital
3. Qual­ity Green­space for health & edu­ca­tion benefits
4. Con­serving Wildlife
5. Sus­tain­able man­age­ment of land and freshwater
Water Frame­work Dir­ect­ive, Scotland’s Wild Deer a Nation­al Approach, Scot­tish Land Use Strategy, Scot­tish Forestry Strategy, Scotland’s Cli­mate Change Plan, Scot­tish Pol­lin­at­or Strategy Nation­al Plan­ning framework	NATION­AL
NATION­AL PARK PART­NER­SHIP PLAN – BIG CON­SER­VA­TION CHALLENGES
Enhan­cing hab­it­ats on a land­scape scale
Pro­tect­ing & enhan­cing declin­ing and fra­gile species
Build­ing sup­port and engagement	REGION­AL
Cairngorms Nature Action Plan, Cairngorms Forest Strategy, Catch­ment Man­age­ment Plans, Deer Man­age­ment Plans, Cairngorms Eco­nom­ic Strategy, Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, Act­ive Cairngorms, LBAPs

1. The plan is one of the five key strategies that sup­port the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan. It spe­cific­ally aims to deliv­er for the three big con­ser­va­tion chal­lenges iden­ti­fied with­in the NPPP:
   • a) Enhan­cing land­scape on a land­scape scale
   • b) Pro­tect­ing and enhan­cing species
   • c) Build­ing sup­port and engagement

2. The Cairngorms Nature Strategy Group sup­ports the CNPA to deliv­er the plan by provid­ing advice, rep­res­ent­ing key stake­hold­ers, facil­it­at­ing and co-ordinating

3. part­ner­ship work­ing, enabling deliv­ery activ­it­ies and inform­a­tion shar­ing and main­tain­ing an over­view of the pro­cesses in place to deliv­er actions and meet the tar­gets in the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan. This spe­cific­ally involves:

   • a) Tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for areas of work, encour­aging and sup­port­ing deliv­ery partners
   • b) Lead­ing the way in demon­strat­ing the ​‘added value’ that work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively can bring
   • c) Mon­it­or­ing pro­gress and provid­ing stra­tegic advice to CNPA staff
   • d) Advoc­at­ing and being an ambas­sad­or for the work of Cairngorms Nature with­in organ­isa­tions and in meet­ings with others
   • e) Provid­ing lead­er­ship, inspir­ing and provid­ing sup­port to organ­isa­tion, indi­vidu­al and com­munity involvement
4. Mem­ber­ship of the Strategy group ccur­rently com­prises rep­res­ent­at­ives from: CNPA, Crown estate Scot­land, River Dee Trust, FLS, MAP, NFUS, NTS, RSPB, SEPA, SLE, SGA, NS and Cairngorms Connect.

Over­view of Activity

1. The action plan was writ­ten in con­sulta­tion with a large num­ber of organ­isa­tions. The res­ult­ing 83 actions and 39 tar­gets were set out into three sec­tions accord­ing to each aim.
2. Each action is assessed on the expert judge­ment of the lead organ­isa­tion and CNPA con­ser­va­tion officers and its status is indic­ated using a ​‘traffic light’ system:

Red	Actions and tar­gets that are at high risk of not being delivered
Amber	Work is delayed and/​or addi­tion­al activ­ity or resource may be required
Green	Work is either com­plete or pro­gress­ing as expected

Actions

1. Over­all there is steady pro­gress on the major­ity of actions. There are two red actions (peat­land and rap­tors) and eight amber. The four actions that were amber in 2020 are now green. The reduc­tion in green actions from 2020 is largely due to the effects of COVID-19.

AIM	Red	Ambe r	Green	Not reporte d	Actions
Land­scape Scale Conservation		2	17		21
Pri­or­ity Species		5	38	0	44
Involving People	0		11	0	12
Deliv­ery and monitoring	0	0	6	0	6
Totals		8	72	1	83

1. The fol­low­ing table con­tains actions that are amber or red (i.e. at risk of not being delivered or asso­ci­ated tar­gets not being met). All oth­er actions are green and so are pro­gress­ing sat­is­fact­or­ily. The com­ment­ary below has been provided by partners.

Action	Action Lead	Sum­mary of pro­gress and Issues	Status
Moor­land and Peat­land Work with a range of land man­agers across the Nation­al Park to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment of peat­lands at a sub-catch­ment level to improve eco­sys­tem bene­fits such as car­bon, water qual­ity and biodiversity.	Peat­land Action	COV­ID-19 impacts on con­tract­ors, a con­tin­ued lack of con­tract­or capa­city and Peat­land ACTION staff work­ing reduced hours all meant that deliv­ery in 2020 was very lim­ited. This has res­ul­ted in a revised estim­ate of 3340ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion by 2024.	Red
Moor­land and Peat­land­Pi­lot new approaches in the ECMP to estab­lish, deliv­er and pro­mote across the Nation­al Park a shared under­stand­ing of sus­tain­able moor­land management.	ECMP	Part­ners in the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship con­tin­ue to invest­ig­ate oppor­tun­it­ies for more sus­tain­able man­age­ment, includ­ing gath­er­ing data on moor­land burn­ing, hare pop­u­la­tions, wader breed­ing suc­cess and oppor­tun­it­ies for wood­land expan­sion. Moor­land man­agers await­ing Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment dir­ec­tion from Wer­rity Report, includ­ing licen­cing of driv­en grouse moors, which will impact man­age­ment principles.	Amber
Nature Friendly Farm­ing­Work with farm­ers, crofters and agents to encour­age integ­rated wood­land development		Gen­er­al applic­a­tions to AECS schemes con­tin­ue to sup­port nature friendly farm­ing, how­ever new pro­jects, schemes and work in areas where it is not already hap­pen­ing is delayed, as CNPA farm advisor post vacancy has impacted on pro­ject devel­op­ment. Agro-forestry tri­als are incor­por­ated into the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid	Amber
Moun­tain Hare­Devel­op col­lab­or­at­ive pop­u­la­tion man­age­ment plans to sus­tain­ably man­age at a land­scape scale	ECMP	ECMP estates are shar­ing data with GWCT to man­age hare pop­u­la­tions at a land­scape scale. Land man­agers are keen to see how pro­tec­ted spe­cies status and future man­age­ment based on licences may affect meth­od­o­lo­gies cur­rently being used.	Amber
Rap­tors Identi­fy unoc­cu­pied golden eagle, hen har­ri­er and per­eg­rine ter­rit­or­ies and work with land man­agers to carry out pos­it­ive man­age­ment that will encour­age re-colonisation	CNPA	Focus con­tin­ues to be on build­ing trust & rela­tion­ships between Rap­tor Study Groups, estates and CNPA. In order to make pro­gress with pos­it­ive action, work needs to identi­fy and imple­ment changes to land man­age­ment on-theground.	Red
Rap­tors Devel­op and deliv­er wild­life tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies that bene­fit loc­al busi­nesses and pro­mote the Nation­al Park as an example of rap­tor con­ser­va­tion success	CNPA	Press release in Sept. 2020 on suc­cess­ful breed­ing of white-tailed eagle on an ECMP estate, the first in Deeside for around 200 years. Plans are in place for inter­pret­a­tion pan­els in the Bal­later Inform­a­tion Centre. Work is not hap­pen­ing at the scale and speed needed to deliv­er the action in full.	Amber
Pine­wood mason bee­Devel­op strategy for incor­por­at­ing spe­cies’ needs into forestry management	SF	Map­ping and there­fore sur­vey work delayed due to Cov­id-19 and staff resources.	Amber
Small Cow Wheat	RBGE	This com­pon­ent has been severely affected by lock­down, and lack of access to facil­it­ies dur­ing 2020/2021.	Amber
Alect­or­ia ochro­leuca (Hair Lichen)	RBGE	This com­pon­ent has been severely affected by lock­down and travel restric­tions that lim­ited site sur­vey and mon­it­or­ing dur­ing 2020/2021.	Amber
Great­er col­lab­or­a­tion and engage­ment in dis­cus­sions and decisions about land useProvide train­ing for land man­agers in approaches to enga­ging com­munit­ies in land man­age­ment decision mak­ing and involvement	CNPA	Sched­uled work delayed due to impacts of COV­ID-19 on oper­a­tion­al plan pri­or­it­ies. Work incor­por­ated into Her­it­age Hori­zons bid.	Amber

Tar­gets

1. Three of the tar­gets in the Action Plan are unlikely to be met. Two spe­cies tar­gets are unlikely to be met by 2024 (caper­cail­lie and rap­tors) and the tar­get of 5000ha of restored peat­land is pre­dicted unlikely to be reached, although it is still pos­sible that this may pick up pace in 2023 and get to 5000ha by 2025.
2. There are 5 amber, largely reflect­ive of delays due to COV­ID-19, and 29 that are green. There are 2 unre­por­ted tar­gets, sca­bi­ous min­ing bee and farm­land waders, due to the effects of COV­ID-19 on sur­vey work and fur­loughed staff.

Tar­gets	Red	Amber	Green	Not repor­ted	Total tar­gets
Land­scape Scale Conservation		3	3		8
Pri­or­ity Species	2	0	24	1	27
Involving People	0	2	3	0	5
Totals		5	30	2	40

1. Spe­cies tar­gets are meas­ured as pro­gress along the 13 stage spe­cies recov­ery pro­cess. The start­ing, cur­rent and tar­get stage for each spe­cies, dif­fer­ent in each spe­cies’ case, has been assessed by spe­cies experts.
2. In some cases the report­ing of actions and tar­gets high­lights where pro­ject activ­ity is on track but the tar­get pop­u­la­tion status is still unlikely to be achieved (caper­cail­lie) and vice versa (pine­wood mason bee).
3. Two spe­cies are pre­dicted to be in a bet­ter SRC pos­i­tion than ori­gin­ally thought. Twin flower has already reached its tar­get stage. One is no longer applic­able because the work on shin­ing guest ant has been sub­sumed into that for wood ants in general.

Land­scape scale conservation

Tar­get	% com­plete	Status	Notes
5,000 Ha new wood­land (incl. regen­er­a­tion and montane)		Amber	2800ha to date
70% of new wood­land to be nat­ive species		Green	90% of the 2,800Ha planted to date is nat­ive woodland
750 Ha PAWS and Nat­ive wood­lands under act­ive restoration		Green	340 ha under act­ive management
Increase in farm­land wader pop­u­la­tions from 2015 baseline		Amber	2020 Sur­vey delayed until spring 2021 due to Covid
20 farms in wood­land & grass­land projects		Amber	Delayed by farm advisor post vacancy; spe­cies rich grass­land pro­ject planned for start in 2022
5,000 Ha peat­land restoration		Red	681 ha delivered 2019 – 2021; 2,200Ha planned for 2022 – 2024
50 ponds cre­ated or restored, includ­ing SUDs ponds		Amber	20 planned for 2021
150 km river and ripari­an restoration		Amber	Sig­ni­fic­ant res­tor­a­tion planned as part of Her­it­age Hori­zons bid

Spe­cies conservation

Tar­get	% com­plete	Status	Notes
There are 29 spe­cies on the pri­or­ity list. Pop­u­la­tion tar­get status is iden­ti­fied for 27 of them.		Green	Activ­ity for 24 of 27 pri­or­ity on track and expec­ted to reach tar­get status.
There is no tar­get status for beaver, as activ­ity is around plan­ning and pre­par­a­tion; and shin­ing guest ant, as the tar­get is now incor­por­ated into wider report­ing on wood ants.			Caper­cail­lie: Very high risk that tar­get will not be met. Full nation­al sur­vey res­ults due in 2022 but oth­er sur­veys sug­gest pop­u­la­tion has declined ser­i­ously from the 1100 birds estim­ated 2016.Raptors: Unlikely that suf­fi­cient actions on the ground will be in place such that con­tin­ued inter­ven­tions are enabling a sus­tained increase in home range occu­pa­tion and breed­ing suc­cess of golden eagle, hen har­ri­er and peregrine.Expert assess­ment of sca­bi­ous min­ing bee status unavail­able due to staff furlough.

Enga­ging people

Tar­get	% com­plete	Status	Notes
Over 50 volun­teer rangers work­ing in Cairngorms Nation­al Park		Green	No recruit­ment since 2020 due to Cov­id. More planned in 2022.
5 com­munit­ies fully engaged in land­scape val­ues project		Amber	Devel­op­ment stage com­plete, sched­uled to start after decision on Her­it­age Hori­zons bid
15,000 people atten­ded out­door, nature-related events		Amber	Cov­id 19 restric­tions on out­door events in 2020⁄21.
3 com­munit­ies involved in land-use decision making		Amber	Devel­op­ment stage com­plete, activ­ity incor­por­ated into Her­it­age Hori­zons bid
20 Land man­agers trained in com­munity engagement		Amber	Delayed due to COV­ID, work not yet star­ted, sched­uled to start 2022

Areas of work at high risk of not being delivered

Peat­land res­tor­a­tion target

1. A con­tin­ued lack of con­tract­or capa­city, the restric­tions imposed by COV­ID-19 on site work and the effect of Peat­land ACTION staff work­ing reduced hours all meant that deliv­ery in 2020 was lim­ited to a num­ber of pro­jects car­ried for­ward from 2019. As a res­ult, just 131ha of res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment was achieved in 2020. The pro­gramme of work planned for the next 3 years, with dir­ect fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, aims to deliv­er 550ha in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂, 900ha in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ and 1300ha in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. There­fore, the likely tar­get could be 3340ha dur­ing the plan peri­od, still well below the 5000ha target.
2. Interest in peat­land res­tor­a­tion is very high and there is no short­age of poten­tial sites on which to under­take work. To accel­er­ate future res­tor­a­tion as much as pos­sible, the Peat­land Action pro­gramme in the CNPA will have a total of 6 staff by the end of 2021. To help meet demand on the avail­ab­il­ity of skilled con­tract­ors, CNPA is work­ing closely with High­lands and Island Enter­prise to sup­port skills devel­op­ment and capa­city build­ing in the private sector.

Home range occu­pa­tion and breed­ing suc­cess of golden eagle, hen har­ri­er and peregrine

1. While rap­tor pop­u­la­tions are gen­er­ally increas­ing in the west of the Park, ongo­ing per­se­cu­tion and hab­it­at avail­ab­il­ity means that, in the east of the Park, ter­rit­ory occu­pancy of golden eagle, per­eg­rine and hen har­ri­er has not recovered from declines mon­itored in recent dec­ades. This is des­pite con­struct­ive ongo­ing dia­logue with sev­er­al estates in the east of the Park and with the rel­ev­ant rap­tor study groups.
2. Work in the East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship has built a sol­id found­a­tion for estab­lish­ing trust and improv­ing rela­tion­ships between estates and rap­tor study groups, although the recent pois­on­ing incid­ent will undoubtedly make work­ing togeth­er more dif­fi­cult. This could be fur­ther developed and expan­ded with addi­tion­al staff time.
3. Pro­gress­ing prac­tic­al, hab­it­at man­age­ment inter­ven­tions along­side the elim­in­a­tion of wild­life crime is essen­tial to improv­ing breed­ing suc­cess and occu­pancy. More work is needed to map hab­it­at avail­ab­il­ity and invest­ig­ate options for incentiv­ising pos­it­ive man­age­ment in order to make gains in places where it is not already happening.

Pop­u­la­tion status of capercaillie

1. The Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject (CCP) is on track to achieve its out­puts in all areas from man­aging human dis­turb­ance to improved under­stand­ing of the genet­ics of the remain­ing pop­u­la­tion. How­ever, there is increas­ing evid­ence, par­tic­u­larly from annu­al lek counts, that the pop­u­la­tion is in

2. ser­i­ous decline. This decline seems to be affect­ing the core Strath­spey pop­u­la­tion, which was pre­vi­ously con­sidered stable, as well as the outly­ing areas.

3. CCP activ­it­ies are now under­way and build­ing a good momentum. It is how­ever far too early to see any demon­strable effects on the pop­u­la­tion. Also, the scope of the CCP, as per the agreed out­comes with Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund, does not cov­er all of the issues affect­ing caper­cail­lie breed­ing suc­cess and survival.
4. The CCP pro­ject board recog­nised a declin­ing pop­u­la­tion as a ser­i­ous issue and have dis­cussed con­tin­gency approaches. There was gen­er­al agree­ment that ser­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of oth­er meas­ures, such as pop­u­la­tion rein­force­ment, should not wait until the end of the pro­ject. CNPA is cur­rently lead­ing dis­cus­sions with key stake­hold­ers on all issues affect­ing caper­cail­lie in Scot­land with a view to find­ing agreed ways forwards.

Pro­gress towards long term objectives:

AIM: Sup­port land­scape scale con­ser­va­tion and col­lab­or­a­tion to deliv­er eco­sys­tem res­tor­a­tion and sus­tain­able land man­age­ment, bal­an­cing envir­on­ment­al, social and eco­nom­ic factors.

1. Main object­ives:

a) Big­ger, more nat­ur­al wood­lands, expand­ing up to a nat­ur­al treeline, provid­ing con­nec­tions across catch­ments and around the cent­ral core of the moun­tain­sThere has been a strong increase in wood­land and above the tar­get rate. This is very likely to con­tin­ue. Early indic­a­tions are that roughly 10,000 ha of new wood­land could be delivered with­in the next five years; poten­tially a doub­ling of the pace of refor­est­a­tion seen in recent years, and some­thing likely to be cata­lysed by the increas­ingly buoy­ant car­bon mar­ket. There is a high pro­por­tion of nat­ive wood­land bolstered by the use of scot pine as a com­mer­cial plant­a­tion crop. The uptake of the wood­land chal­lenge fund has increased this year with 7 suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions lead­ing to a total of 350 ha of new woodlands.

b) More nat­ur­al, dynam­ic rivers con­nec­ted to func­tion­ing wet­lands and flood­plainsFresh­wa­ter res­tor­a­tion, includ­ing ripari­an plant­ing, is a well-estab­lished prac­tice in all of the catch­ments in the Nation­al Park. Water Frame­work dir­ect­ive fund­ing has tar­geted the remov­al of bar­ri­ers to fish pas­sage and increas­ing nat­ur­al­ness. Ripari­an plant­ing in upper catch­ments and the use of woody debris to re-nat­ur­al­ise and provide spawn­ing hab­it­at is becom­ing com­mon­place. Catch­ment Man­age­ment Part­ner­ships are highly effect­ive mech­an­isms for deliv­er­ing ​‘shovel-ready’ pro­jects and have been able to cap­it­al­ise on recent Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Funds with cri­ter­ia for imme­di­ate, cap­it­al spend and demon­strable out­puts. Pro­pos­als in the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid will enable work to scale up from rel­at­ively small, demon­stra­tion pro­jects into lar­ger, landscape-

c) Restored peat­lands stop­ping the loss of car­bon, improv­ing water qual­ity and help­ing alle­vi­ate flood­ing Only 131 hec­tares of the planned res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment work was com­pleted in 2020 due to the com­bin­a­tion of the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic and con­tract­or avail­ab­il­ity. A large pro­gramme of peat depth, herb­i­vore impact assess­ment, veget­a­tion mon­it­or­ing and breed­ing bird sur­veys are cur­rently under­way across our sites. This inform­a­tion will enable future plan­ning of works. Early access to sites to start res­tor­a­tion is essen­tial in expand­ing the win­dow for work­ing and we are look­ing at the poten­tial of work­ing in the spring and pla­cing a con­di­tion on all future fund­ing for a start date for pro­jects of I Septem­ber 2020. In April 2021 CNPA received dir­ect peat­land res­tor­a­tion fund­ing and has estab­lished its own Peat­land Action Team. This togeth­er with a three year fund arrange­ment will lead to a rap­id expan­sion of the rate of res­tor­a­tion and 3,500ha is anti­cip­ated with­in the next five years.

d) More sus­tain­ably man­aged moor­lands with more struc­tur­al and spe­cies diversity and pock­ets and strips of trees and shrubs on moor­land edges, steep slopes, in gul­lies and around wood­land rem­nants Improve­ment to the sus­tain­ab­il­ity moor­lands is still the focus for the ECMP and there are diverse pro­jects and stud­ies aimed at achiev­ing more struc­tur­al diversity. Con­ver­sa­tions are still being had through the deer man­age­ment groups and the Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group. The out­come of the Wer­rity review and the pro­spect of licen­cing of shoot­ing estates has changed the con­text and will hope­fully accel­er­ate good prac­tice. How­ever there are still many issues around moor­land man­age­ment, cli­mate change and the illeg­al killing of raptors.

e) More hab­it­at suit­able for breed­ing waders as part of agri­cul­tur­al sys­tems Sur­veys in Badenoch and Strath­spey between 2000 and 2010 showed a 42% decline in one of the most import­ant breed­ing wader pop­u­la­tions in main­land Bri­tain. Repeat sur­veys in 2015 showed the wader declines had hal­ted. This is largely due to the efforts of farm­ers and land man­agers work­ing with the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ive to man­age rush and cre­ate scrapes suit­able for breed­ing and chick rear­ing. The suc­cess of this pro­ject has been rep­lic­ated by the Peesie pro­ject as part of the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship. Sim­il­ar pro­jects run in Grampi­an and the Angus Glens, albeit with less resource and fund­ing. Both SWWI and the Peesie Pro­ject have been able to take advant­age of cap­it­al fund­ing at short notice to deliv­er hab­it­at cre­ation. Fund­ing from CNPA and Work­ing for Waders is cur­rently sup­port­ing a CNPA officer work­ing with SWWI, to notice­able effect par­tic­u­larly in coordin­at­ing resource and activ­ity across the whole of the Park.

f) Wild­life-rich grass­land and wood­land on pro­duct­ive prof­it­able farms. Recent mon­it­or­ing high­lighted a trend of decreas­ing extent and qual­ity of species

rich grass­land in Badenoch & Strath­spey. 39% of sites sur­veyed in ²⁰⁰⁶⁄₀₇ have shown a loss in spe­cies diversity and cov­er. Of the 87 sites where spe­cies rich grass­land was the pre­dom­in­ant cov­er in 2006/2007, 58% have exper­i­enced sig­ni­fic­ant losses. The main cause of loss, respons­ible for 56% of the changes (in both groups) has been due to a reduc­tion in graz­ing, and the second biggest factor, respons­ible for 22% of changes/​losses has been devel­op­ment. Oth­er factors included wood­land plant­ing (2%) and live­stock dam­age (2%). Sur­veys are under­way in Glen­liv­et and Deeside to estab­lish if this pat­tern will be found else­where. As a con­sequence of this data, were are devel­op­ing new pro­jects focused on main­ten­ance and res­tor­a­tion of spe­cies rich grassland.There are some very good, rel­at­ively small, case stud­ies and examples of wood­land and trees integ­rated with pro­duct­ive farm­land with­in the Nation­al Park. Lar­ger scale and main­streamed agro-forestry is chal­len­ging, not least because agro-forestry is highly depend­ent on basic pay­ments schemes, Agri-Envir­on­ment Cli­mate Scheme (AECS) and Forest Grants Schemes. The farmed straths of the Nation­al Park con­tin­ue to be a nation­ally import­ant strong­hold for aspen. Good rela­tions with farm­ers and crofters in the Park remain crit­ic­al to identi­fy­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for pro­tect­ing and expand­ing the resource.

Aim: Deliv­er focussed action to improve the con­ser­va­tion status of threatened or declin­ing species

1. Main object­ive:

a) Get­ting spe­cies back on a sus­tain­able foot­ing, where they are no longer reli­ant on tar­geted action, but have been recovered with­in a robust and resi­li­ent net­work of hab­it­ats Innov­at­ive con­ser­va­tion tech­niques and translocations/​rein­force­ments, such as work on pine hov­er­fly, wood ants, twin­flower and Scot­tish wild­cat, con­tin­ue to sup­port and rein­force the Park’s spe­cial repu­ta­tion as a strong­hold for some the country’s most unique, rare and endangered wild­life. Spe­cies work con­tin­ues to be driv­en for­ward by spe­cif­ic pro­jects, often led by the envir­on­ment­al Non-Gov­ern­ment­al Organ­isa­tion (eNGO) sec­tor with sup­port from CNPA and NatureScot. The pro­jects are largely reli­ant on extern­al fund­ing and oper­ate on 2 – 3yr fund­ing cycles.

Aim: Enga­ging, inspir­ing and encour­aging loc­al com­munit­ies and com­munit­ies of interest to value and care for nature, be proud of the con­ser­va­tion work in the Cairngorms and want to do some­thing to pro­tect their nat­ur­al heritage.

1. Main object­ives:

a) Rais­ing aware­ness and under­stand­ing of land man­age­ment and clearly demon­strat­ing the bene­fits that con­ser­va­tion brings for people as well as wild­life The appoint­ment of a con­ser­va­tion engage­ment officer has brought addi­tion­al focus and resource to activ­ity in an area of the Action Plan which his­tor­ic­ally hasn’t seen as much pro­gress as land­scape-scale and pri­or­ity species

con­ser­va­tion. COV­ID restric­tions have clearly impacted on the flag­ship BIG week­end, but there has been increas­ing recog­ni­tion and appet­ite to be involved in the event from land man­agers’ none-the-less. There is a strong focus on the rela­tion­ship between com­munit­ies and the sur­round­ing land­scapes and land man­age­ment in the Her­it­age Hori­zons bid. Com­munity-led nature-based pro­jects are strongly encour­aged through the Green Recov­ery Fund; close mon­it­or­ing of uptake may identi­fy strengths, bar­ri­ers and oppor­tun­it­ies for skills devel­op­ment and capa­city building.

b) More engage­ment with nature: more people involved in decision mak­ing, get­ting out and enjoy­ing it and help­ing to look after it.

People’s rela­tion­ship with the nature around them has been brought into sharp focus and many part­ners are keen to cap­it­al­ise on the pos­sib­il­it­ies for increased and sus­tained engage­ment. Whilst some com­munit­ies in the Park have very act­ive wild­life groups and there is clearly an appet­ite for involve­ment in volun­teer­ing, com­munit­ies tak­ing the lead in con­ser­va­tion pro­jects is rel­at­ively lim­ited, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared with e.g. cul­tur­al her­it­age activ­it­ies. The devel­op­ment of Cairngorms Nature ​‘engage­ment path­ways’ has the poten­tial to build on the BIG week­end and Volun­teer Rangers as corner­stones of a wider pro­gramme of engage­ment and support.

Fund­ing

1. In 2019 and 2020 NatureScot admin­istered a new fund­ing stream for con­ser­va­tion: the Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Fund. The £2million annu­al fund is for cap­it­al works to restore hab­it­ats and carry out spe­cies con­ser­va­tion that would con­trib­ute to inter­na­tion­al Aichi tar­gets and address the cli­mate emer­gency and biod­iversity crisis. Funds need to be spent with­in one fin­an­cial year and have land own­er per­mis­sions in place to secure a min­im­um 10yr leg­acy. Deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan was con­sidered a key cri­ter­ia in judging applic­a­tions in the Cairngorms. CNPA suc­cess­fully applied for funds total­ing c£200,000 and man­aged these funds on behalf of a range of partners.

2. Deliv­ery of the Action Plan has bene­fit­ted massively from the abil­ity of part­ners with the resources and per­mis­sions already in place to deliv­er pro­jects with­in one fin­an­cial year. Funds admin­istered by NatureScot were tar­geted at large, trans­form­at­ive inter­ven­tions and after the first round of fund­ing part­ners with the capa­city to do so were encour­aged to apply dir­ectly to NatureScot. In 2021 CNPA suc­cess­fully applied for a fur­ther £196,000 of Biod­iversity Chal­lenge Funds, to be admin­istered dir­ectly by CNPA, fur­ther enabling tar­geted spend and the involve­ment of a wider range of smal­ler pro­jects, land man­agers and organisations.

3. In 2021, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment also launched the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund: a fur­ther £10million of invest­ment into efforts to tackle the cli­mate emer­gency and biodiversity

crisis through nature recov­ery. Whilst cri­ter­ia are still being developed it is clear that funds are for cap­it­al inter­ven­tions and must be spent this fin­an­cial year.

Green Recov­ery

1. Recent invest­ment into deliv­er­ing the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan and the aspir­a­tions for peat­land res­tor­a­tion, wood­land expan­sion, river res­tor­a­tion and spe­cies con­ser­va­tion has res­ul­ted in mil­lions of pounds into loc­al eco­nom­ies. There is sig­ni­fic­ant oppor­tun­ity in the Cairngorms to excel at demon­strat­ing a diverse rur­al eco­nomy build­ing on the tra­di­tion­al and devel­op­ing land man­age­ment skills needed to deliv­er the nature-based solu­tions at the heart of tack­ling the cli­mate emer­gency and biod­iversity crisis.