210910CNPABdPaper2Annex1NPPPDeliveryTemplate 2020-21 V2

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity — NPPP Pro­gramme Deliv­ery: Conservation

Pri­or­ity	No.	Agenda for Action	Key Work Areas	5‑Year Out­come	Mile­stones & End Date	Notes 19⁄20	Notes 20⁄21	Status 19⁄20	Status 20⁄21
1. Land­scape Scale Conservation	1a.	Tar­get effort and sup­port to the most effect­ive oppor­tun­it­ies to deliv­er the pub­lic interest pri­or­it­ies such as wood­land improve­ment and expan­sion, peat­land res­tor­a­tion, flood risk management	Pro­duce wood­land expan­sion tar­get map and pro­mote Input to forestry con­sulta­tions Pub­lish New Cairngorms Forest Strategy Tar­get and pro­mote peat­land res­tor­a­tion oppor­tun­it­ies Pro­mote oppor­tun­it­ies for nat­ur­al flood man­age­ment | 5000 ha Nat­ive wood­land expan­sion Improved wood­land hab­it­ats Improved forest cre­ation and man­age­ment 5000 ha Peat­land res­tor­a­tion Examples of nat­ur­al flood management	By sum­mer 2018 x By sum­mer 2019 y 5000ha wood­land expan­sion by 2022 Forestry con­sulta­tions respon­ded to as neces­sary CFS pub­lished Autumn 2018  5000ha peat­land res­tor­a­tion by 2022  Sub-catch­ment mon­it­or­ing of extens­ive range of NFM meas­ures | 2948 ha of wood­land expan­sion achieved since 2017 (updated Nov 2019). 1788 ha Peat­land res­tor­a­tion since 2017. 508ha of peat­land under res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment (sub­ject to weath­er) dur­ing 2019⁄20. 487ha not pro­gressed due to lack of con­tract­or capa­city and snow on site. Over 5500ha of peat depth sur­veys and HIA done. Whilst fund­ing is no longer a prob­lem, con­tract­or capa­city restrict­ing amount of peat­land res­tor­a­tion. Wood­land res­tor­a­tion and expan­sion at Mar Lodge, Glen Tanar and Bal­loch­buie through SNH MA and AECS. Cairngorms Con­nect — 550ha of new nat­ive wood­land planted and 200 ha of mont­ane wood­land planted in 2019; enhanced deer man­age­ment to pro­tect mont­ane hab­it­ats and nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion. Lodge­pole pine removed for con­ver­sion to Scots Pine; estab­lish­ment of tree nurs­ery includ­ing mont­ane wil­low spe­cies and seed col­lec­ted from high alti­tude downy birch	Early indic­a­tions, based on draft wood­land cre­ation pro­pos­als on vari­ous estates across the CNP, sug­gests a tar­get of 1000 ha/​yr will be eas­ily achieved (pos­sibly twice over) across the next five year peri­od. Peat­land: Delays due to Cov­id-19, six leg­acy pro­jects star­ted in the late sum­mer of 2020. Actu­al res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment totalled only 131 hec­tares in 2020⁄21 against a tar­get of 1170 hec­tares. Since 2018 a total of 2172 hec­tares have been restored. A pro­gramme of works, cov­er­ing nearly 550 hec­tares is planned this year as well as final­ising the neces­sary admin­is­tra­tion to run­ning our own peat­land programme.	Amber	Wood­land — Green Peat­land — Red * Over­all — Amber
	1b.	Sup­port and fur­ther devel­op the role of catch­ment part­ner­ships (CPs) as mech­an­isms to co-ordin­ate land use plan­ning, and identi­fy pri­or­ity areas for nat­ur­al flood management	Input to CPs to ensure they work effect­ively on the ground Devel­op and mon­it­or CP action plans	Effect­ive Catch­ment Part­ner­ships, achiev­ing prac­tic­al res­ults | Catch­ment Part­ner­ships fully staffed and integ­rated with Fish­ery Trusts Wide range of new prac­tic­al examples of sus­tain­able catch­ment man­age­ment | 348ha of peat­land restored; final year of field­work con­cluded on first phase of pred­at­or-prey pro­ject; baseline sur­veys com­pleted for wood­land expan­sion mod­el, spe­cies indic­at­ors, inver­teb­rate and song­bird com­munit­ies; Spey val­ley wader con­ser­va­tion pro­ject — SNH tri­al­ling POBAS approach to agri-envir­on­ment fund­ing River Dee Trust launched ​‘Plant a Mil­lion Trees’ cam­paign — ripari­an plant­ing in upper catch­ment Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive deliv­er­ing ripari­an plant­ing and river res­tor­a­tion pro­jects along the Spey. New River Dee Catch­ment Man­age­ment Plan final draft stage S. Esk CMP deliv­er­ing ripari­an plant­ing and river res­tor­a­tion | Spey, Dee and S. Esk Catch­ment man­age­ment Part­ner­ships con­tin­ue to deliv­er res­tor­a­tion pro­jects as exem­plars of using woody debris and ripari­an plant­ing to re-nat­ur­al­ise fresh­wa­ter sys­tems. * CNPA rep­res­en­ted in Boards and steer­ing groups of all 3 catch­ment organ­isa­tions, fos­ter­ing Park wide approaches and integ­ra­tion with NPPP	Green	Green
	1c.	Sup­port land own­er led col­lab­or­a­tions to co-ordin­ate plan­ning, deliv­ery and mon­it­or­ing across mul­tiple land hold­ings, includ­ing Cairngorms Con­nect and the East Cairngorms Moor­land Partnership	CC — Offer advice and sup­port to CC as reques­ted ECMP — drive for­ward agreed pro­jects (eg hab­it­at enhance­ment map, rap­tor pro­jects, muir­burn plan)	CC — Long term pro­jects (eg mont­ane wood­land res­tor­a­tion, co-ordin­ated deer man­age­ment) begun. ECMP — Estates work­ing in co-ordin­ated fash­ion on agreed set of key projects	CC — 2018 — ELP applic­a­tion suc­cess­ful. ECMP — 2019 – key pro­jects under­way on muir­burn, wood­lands, raptors	Cairngorms Con­nect com­menced an Endangered Land­scapes Pro­gramme fun­ded 5 year work pro­gramme worth $5 mil­lion USD and has increased its team with 9 new FTE work­ing on part­ner­ship object­ives includ­ing increas­ing pub­lic engage­ment. ECMP — muir­burn map com­pleted; all estates trained in moun­tain hare count­ing & par­ti­cip­at­ing in annu­al counts; 2‑yr wader pro­ductiv­ity mon­it­or­ing pro­ject with	Cairngorms Con­nect — ELP pro­gramme on tar­get re deer man­age­ment, peat­land res­tor­a­tion, catch­ment work etc. Much media interest in this work ECMP — all areas of work ongo­ing eg muir­burn map­ping, wader pro­ject, map­ping of poten­tial wood­land and scrub. Rap­tor mon­it­or­ing affected by Cov­id reg­u­la­tions. One part­ner has left ECMP after end of 20⁄21, how­ever work pro­gress­ing with remain­ing partners.	Green	Green
	1d.	Co-ordin­ate hab­it­at, recre­ation and devel­op­ment man­age­ment to secure the caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion through deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Framework	NLHF bid: Com­munity con­sulta­tion & action plan­ning; forest expan­sion & enhance­ment; genet­ic research; mon­it­or­ing; fence marking/​remov­al Explore translocation/​rein­tro­duc­tion	150ha new nat­ive wood­land Action Plans in 5 com­munit­ies of interest and place Translocation/​rein­tro­duc­tion? | NLHF pro­ject devel­op­ment phase under­way sum­mer 2018; phase two applic­a­tion sub­mit­ted spring 2019  Translocation/​rein­tro­duc­tion (or not) agreed by end 2020 | BTO com­pleted Devel­op­ment phase com­pleted. Stage 2 bid to be sub­mit­ted March 2020. Forest expan­sion and enhance­ments tar­gets exceeded (sub­ject to fund­ing). 1 com­munity action plan writ­ten for pilot com­munity (Carr bridge) and 5 oth­ers signed up for phase 2. SNH, RSPB and FLS in dis­cus­sion on Deeside over caper, with per­haps long-term view of estab­lish­ing Deeside Caper officer to raise aware­ness in community	NLHF fun­ded Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie pro­ject on track and deliv­er­ing the Approved Pur­poses as per pro­ject plan. NatureScot Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Com­mit­tee sub-group estab­lished to review the sci­entif­ic evid­ence around caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion with an emphas­is on the Cairngorms and the rel­at­ive mer­its of pred­at­or con­trol, reintroduction/​reinforcement and areas of min­im­um dis­turb­ance * Nation­al 5 yearly pop­u­la­tion count sched­uled for winter 2021⁄22	Amber	Amber
	1e.	Deliv­er co-ordin­ated con­ser­va­tion action through the Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Partnership	Lead the TGLP Man­age TGLP staff Fin­an­cial admin­is­tra­tion | Suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of the HLF fun­ded Land­scape Con­ser­va­tion Action Plan	Bird hide built — Winter 2017  Dis­cov­ery Centre open — Spring 2018  Wide range of river and ripari­an pro­jects in place by 2020  Scalan vis­it­or facil­it­ies up and run­ning- end 2019	Final stages of pro­gramme. Some sig­ni­fic­ant hurdles remain, but over­all pro­jects have pro­gressed extremely well, on time and on budget Staff are work­ing extremely hard and TGLP board con­tin­ue to mon­it­or pro­gress closely Need to con­cen­trate on tying up remain­ing pro­jects, agree­ing all the 10 year pro­ject man­age­ment and main­ten­ance agree­ments and ensur­ing leg­acy man­age­ment is in place | Pro­gramme suc­cess­fully com­pleted in March 2021. Full final grant fund­ing received in August fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion of final report	Green	Com­plete
	1f.	Devel­op a region­al Natura Plan for the suite of Spe­cial Areas of Con­ser­va­tion (SACs) and Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Areas (SPAs) in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The plan will address con­ser­va­tion object­ives, meas­ures, and pri­or­it­ies for the suite of sites. It will seek to enhance deliv­ery of favour­able con­di­tion and integ­rate site man­age­ment with broad­er con­ser­va­tion object­ives bey­ond the des­ig­nated sites	Cla­ri­fy (with­in CNPA) what a suc­cess­ful out­come looks like Build sup­port — crit­ic­ally with SNH – for this object­ive Pilot what this looks like on one/​two key sites | One/​two pro­jects being worked out in practice	2019 — work under­way with SNH and FCS on one site (Glenavon or Glen Tilt?) to under­stand how new wood­land might be developed on a des­ig­nated open ground site | Devel­op­ing innov­at­ive think­ing to max­im­ise the poten­tial for nat­ive pine­wood and mont­ane wood­land expan­sion whilst com­ply­ing with Natura require­ments. A doc­u­ment out­lining prin­ciples for com­bin­ing the Cairngorms Forest Strategy and Natura require­ments has been pre­pared and is look­ing to help bal­ance the value of these sites along­side oth­er land man­age­ment aspir­a­tions In addi­tion, SNH are pre­par­ing CAPs for Cairngorms and oth­er SACs with­in the Park to provide clear­er steer	‘Prin­ciples’ con­tin­ue to be applied to vari­ous wood­land pro­pos­als on SAC and SPA des­ig­na­tions NS Con­ser­va­tion Advice Pack­ages for SACs still being final­ised but will indic­ate future dir­ec­tion for these sites * In addi­tion, NS have set up a num­ber of Pro­tec­ted Areas Review pilots, which should bet­ter inform how the Natura net­work can integ­rate with eg cli­mate change land use needs in the long term	Amber	Amber
	1g.	Plan pro­act­ively for the poten­tial and man­age­ment implic­a­tions of beaver populations	Stake­hold­er engage­ment Hab­it­at pre­par­a­tion Scen­ario plan­ning | Pro­gramme of hab­it­at man­age­ment in place Stake­hold­ers well informed and pre­pared | Scen­ario plan­ning & options apprais­al sum­mer 2018  Hab­it­at man­age­ment pro­jects star­ted 2019 | Presen­ted at Scot­tish Wild Beaver Group con­fer­ence in June 2019 Aspen and ripari­an plant­ing increas­ing Expert opin­ion pre­dicts like­li­hood of arrival by nat­ur­al means remains low	CNPA are work­ing with land man­agers and part­ners to be bet­ter informed and bet­ter pre­pared for a pos­sible arrival by nat­ur­al means and any future man­age­ment options A com­mis­sioned report will invest­ig­ate the like­li­hood of beavers nat­ur­ally migrat­ing into the Park, map­ping and mod­el­ling where they might dis­perse to and where they are most likely to build dams, assess­ing impacts and oppor­tun­it­ies for eco­logy and land use in the Park * The report is expec­ted in Septem­ber ​‘21, with con­sulta­tion and an action plan to follow	Green	Green
	1h.	Con­sider options to provide appro­pri­ate pub­lic recog­ni­tion where large areas of land are man­aged for nature conservation	Col­late examples of best prac­tice achiev­ing con­ser­va­tion goals Cairngorms Nature BIG Week­end. CN Comm’s &	Increased pub­lic recog­ni­tion of land­scape-scale con­ser­va­tion suc­cess stor­ies | Improved pub­li­cising of suc­cesses on the web, at events and in pub­lic­a­tions — 2020  Research into eco­nom­ic, envir­on­ment­al and | Range of land-use mod­els well rep­res­en­ted at Cairngorms Nature BIG week­end Cairngorms Nature Farm Award and social media accounts pro­mote good | Range of land-use mod­els well rep­res­en­ted at Cairngorms Nature BIG week­end * Cairngorms Nature Action Plan mid-term report and film show­case the	Green	Green
2. Deer Management	2a.	Con­tin­ue to dir­ect pub­lic funds to sup­port deliv­ery of pub­lic bene­fits and explore new oppor­tun­it­ies for fund­ing includ­ing, for example, car­bon man­age­ment and vol­un­tary con­ser­va­tion contributions	Par­ti­cip­ate in rel­ev­ant dis­cus­sions on eg Brexit and farm­ing, vis­it­or giv­ing Con­sider oppor­tun­it­ies for car­bon moneys into land man­age­ment, vis­it­or con­tri­bu­tions to key projects	Pub­lic funds tar­geted more clearly with­in Park. Clar­ity on wheth­er car­bon and vis­it­or fund­ing is prac­tic­al and realistic	2019 — vis­it­or giv­ing pilots estab­lished New grant sources suc­cess­ful eg ELP Car­bon fund­ing fur­ther explored | ECM