230829_LOAFPaper2_QuietAreasforNature

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Devel­op­ing Quiet Areas for Nature

Intro­duc­tion

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park has one of the best path net­works in Scot­land and is a unique des­tin­a­tion with a wide vari­ety of recre­ation­al activ­it­ies that sup­port health and well­being as well as the loc­al eco­nomy. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP4) iden­ti­fies that there is a need to ensure that the way people enjoy the out­doors should not neg­at­ively impact on spe­cies, archae­ology and hab­it­ats with­in the Nation­al Park. Spe­cific­ally, NPPP4 has an action to con­sider all poten­tial mech­an­isms to reduce dis­turb­ance on key spe­cies and recre­ation­al impacts on high ground.

2. The draft Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan has iden­ti­fied a num­ber of key actions to deliv­er this aspir­a­tion includ­ing the devel­op­ment of ​“quiet areas for nature” as a man­age­ment tool to focus activ­ity that reduces recre­ation­al disturbance.

LOAF mem­bers are asked to:

• Take note of pro­gress to date.
• Sup­port the devel­op­ment of ​“quiet areas for nature”
• Advise on the impact of pro­posed man­age­ment meas­ures on the exer­cise of access rights.
• Advise, if appro­pri­ate, about how the team could fur­ther improve their approach.

Back­ground

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and NatureScot have been asked by Lor­na Slater, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter for Green Skills, Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Biod­iversity to work with stake­hold­ers to lead a coordin­ated action plan for the crit­ic­ally endangered caper­cail­lie. Included with­in this plan, as part of a broad­er range of work on fen­cing, pred­at­or man­age­ment and hab­it­at improve­ment, is man­age­ment to reduce recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance on sens­it­ive caper­cail­lie sites.

2. In addi­tion to the advice provided by the LOAF at the meet­ing in April 2022, the Park Author­ity has hos­ted two stake­hold­er work­shops on issues affecting

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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caper­cail­lie includ­ing explor­ing the issue of recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance with the emphas­is on how to:

• Take for­ward work to invest­ig­ate options for path man­age­ment, devel­op­ing refuges, encour­aging respons­ible access and employ­ing a great­er suite of meas­ures to reduce human dis­turb­ance than con­sist­ently employed currently.
• Learn from, and build on, the com­munity-led approach taken by the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject to find sus­tain­able solutions.
• Ensure a pro­por­tion­al response and equity amongst recre­ation­al users.
• Take a broad approach that looks at identi­fy­ing and pri­or­it­ising quiet areas for nature, rather than focus­ing just on capercaillie.

1. There is wide­spread sup­port amongst key stake­hold­ers that action does need to be taken to halt the decline of caper­cail­lie, includ­ing redu­cing recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance and agree­ment to do this focus­sing on a broad­er range of spe­cies and hab­it­ats and not one single species.

2. Part 1 of the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 gives every­one stat­utory access rights to most land and inland water. How­ever, people only have these rights if they exer­cise them respons­ibly and Sec­tion 2 of the Act defines respons­ibly as being ​“in a way which is law­ful and reas­on­able and takes prop­er account of the interests of oth­ers and of the fea­tures of the land in respect of which the rights are exercised.”

3. The Scot­tish Out­door Access Code goes on to give fur­ther guid­ance with part 3 on exer­cising access rights respons­ibly includ­ing a sec­tion on how to care for the envir­on­ment indic­at­ing access users should do this by:

   • not inten­tion­ally or reck­lessly dis­turb­ing or des­troy­ing plants, birds and oth­er anim­als, or geo­lo­gic­al features;
   • fol­low­ing any vol­un­tary agree­ments between land man­agers and recre­ation bodies.

4. Part 3.45 of the Code then provides more detailed advice on how to act respons­ibly which includes: -

   • not linger­ing if it is clear that your pres­ence is caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dis­turb­ance to a bird or oth­er wild animal;
   • fol­low­ing any agreed inform­a­tion aimed at pre­vent­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dis­turb­ance to pro­tec­ted plants, birds or oth­er anim­als, or at pre­vent­ing the spread of erosion in more sens­it­ive areas;

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

• tak­ing extra care to avoid dis­turb­ing more sens­it­ive birds and anim­als, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing their breed­ing season.

1. Sec­tion 3 of the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 defines the recip­roc­al Page 3 of 7 oblig­a­tions of land own­ers which includes an assump­tion that ​“an own­er is to be pre­sumed to be using, man­aging and con­duct­ing the own­er­ship of land in a way which is respons­ible if it does not cause unreas­on­able inter­fer­ence with the access rights of any per­son exer­cising or seek­ing to exer­cise them” and goes on to indic­ate in Sec­tion 3 (2) (b) they are in con­tra­ven­tion of the act if their man­age­ment ​“dis­reg­ards the guid­ance on respons­ible con­duct set out in the Access Code and incum­bent on the own­ers of land”.

10.Section 14 (1) (a) of the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 states that ​“The own­er of land in respect of which access rights are exer­cis­able shall not, for the pur­pose or for the main pur­pose of pre­vent­ing or deter­ring any per­son entitled to exer­cise these rights from doing so put up any sign or notice.” How­ever, Sec­tion 29 does give Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age (now NatureScot) the power to put up signs to pro­tect nat­ur­al heritage.

11.Guidance for land man­agers in the Code is largely focussed on land man­age­ment activ­it­ies but it is assumed that the same prin­ciples would be deemed to be applic­able to any guid­ance regard­ing a wild­life refuge. Part 4 of the Code defines a num­ber of actions that land man­agers should avoid: -

• delib­er­ately or unne­ces­sar­ily mak­ing a path or track that might be used by the pub­lic dif­fi­cult to use;
• remov­ing a path or a gate without provid­ing a reas­on­able altern­at­ive nearby;
• erect­ing a sign or notice worded in a way which intim­id­ates or deters the public.

1. The Act and the Code there­fore clearly indic­ate that land man­agers can­not com­pulsor­ily exclude access users from land solely for the pur­pose of pro­tect­ing wild­life. How­ever, as described under the rights and respons­ib­il­it­ies of access users above, vol­un­tary agree­ments between land man­agers and recre­ation bod­ies are legit­im­ate although access should not be unreas­on­ably pre­ven­ted. Sig­nage would have to be clear not to pre­vent access but to explain the basis for any request to vol­un­tar­ily avoid an area.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

A pro­posed mod­el for ​“Quiet areas for nature” Page 4 of 7

1. Exist­ing work: Cur­rently with­in the Park there are num­ber of sens­it­ive sites which have been iden­ti­fied where vis­it­or man­age­ment efforts are already being focussed. These include form­al des­ig­na­tions such as Spe­cial Sites of Sci­entif­ic Interest (SSSI) or Nation­al Nature Reserve (NNR) status, hot­spots sites as iden­ti­fied in the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Plan and areas of com­munity work such as the Trail Feath­ers (Moun­tain bikers — Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject) pro­ject. Across these sites vari­ous meas­ures are being deployed to sup­port respons­ible beha­viour and reduce recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance including:

   • Increased Ranger patrols at sens­it­ive times for example lekking times
   • Sea­son­al advis­ory signage
   • Path devel­op­ment pro­jects to encour­age people towards suit­able locations
   • Loc­al man­age­ment agree­ments- for example Loch Kinnord.
   • Aware­ness rais­ing through social media

2. Key para­met­ers: It is pro­posed that in identi­fy­ing ​“Quiet areas for nature” in the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan:

   • we are not estab­lish­ing a new des­ig­na­tion but a man­age­ment tool to ensure pri­or­it­isa­tion of effort in redu­cing recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance in par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive areas.
   • The public’s access rights will not be affected:
   • That the focus in on areas where a level activ­ity already being under­taken that sup­ports quiet spaces:
   • That the pro­cess will be open and trans­par­ent for the pub­lic to see all the ​‘dis­turb­ance redu­cing activ­it­ies’ that are already tak­ing place in sens­it­ive areas for nature and that all that a ​‘quiet space’ is poten­tially doing is draw­ing a line around that activ­ity and adding to it where needed.

3. Iden­ti­fic­a­tion of the Areas: To identi­fy spa­tially where these ​“quiet areas for nature” should be loc­ated, the fol­low­ing guidelines have been used:

   • Pres­ence of key spe­cies vul­ner­able to recre­ation­al disturbance
   • Build­ing on exist­ing work to reduce disturbance
   • Con­cerns from resource man­agers about levels of disturbance
   • Strong robust evid­ence base that has wide­spread stake­hold­er buy in

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Man­age­ment Meas­ures: A menu of man­age­ment meas­ures is set out in Annex 2 to show the range of meas­ures that could be deployed. Agree­ing these meas­ures for each ​“Quiet area for nature” will entail a degree of com­munity engage­ment, vis­it­or man­age­ment plan­ning and resource alloc­a­tion. Status as a ​“Quiet area for nature” would sup­port these object­ives and ensure adequate resources are avail­able to deliv­er key actions.

Mon­it­or­ing success

17.The mon­it­or­ing of quiet areas for nature will allow the Park Author­ity and part­ners to estab­lish if vis­it­or man­age­ment meas­ures put in place are work­ing and will build up an evid­ence base to jus­ti­fy or oth­er­wise addi­tion­al measures.

1. Giv­en the pre­cari­ous nature of caper­cail­lie in Scot­land if man­age­ment meas­ures are not work­ing then the Park Author­ity would work with land man­agers and recre­ation­al users to determ­ine what addi­tion­al meas­ures are needed, includ­ing wheth­er bylaws or man­age­ment rules would enhance success

2. It is pro­posed that a mon­it­or­ing frame­work is developed based on the fol­low­ing principles:

   • Wide­spread sup­port for man­age­ment measures
   • High degree of com­pli­ance by the vis­it­ing pub­lic on site spe­cif­ic advice
   • No net increase in the num­ber of inform­al paths with­in iden­ti­fied areas of the quiet place for nature.

Next Steps

1. The devel­op­ment of ​“Quiet areas for nature” will be an Annex to the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan which will be presen­ted to the Park Author­ity Board for approv­al at the end of November.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Annex 1- Menu of man­age­ment meas­ures for ​“Quiet areas for nature” Page 6 of 7

Meas­ures Activ­ity Rangers

• Dawn and dusk patrols at Lek sites
• Sup­port­ing ​“Lek-it-be” cam­paign activity
• Gen­er­al patrols and Face-to-face engage­ment Sea­son­al signage
• Dogs on leads dur­ing bird breed­ing season
• Agreed sea­son­al restric­tions sig­nage e.g., Loch Kin­nord / pad­dling Vol­un­tary agreements
• Loc­al vol­un­tary agree­ments with com­munit­ies of interest (eg dog walk­ers) to avoid cer­tain areas or fol­low cer­tain guidelines
• Devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of com­munity led actions plans for spe­cif­ic recre­ation­al groups i.e. paddle boarders Path improve­ments to encour­age people towards envir­on­ment­ally sound sites
• Act­ive pro­mo­tion of suit­able alternatives
• Invest­ment in nearby path net­work Pro­mo­tion of less sens­it­ive altern­at­ive routes/​areas that offer com­par­able recre­ation­al experiences
• Act­ive pro­mo­tion and devel­op­ment on nearby less sens­it­ive sites to sup­port recre­ation­al activ­ity. Hab­it­at man­age­ment to provide grit away from paths/​tracks
• Cre­ation of grit­ting areas to reduce use of tracks for grit­ting by caper­cail­lie Path/​track side screening
• Use of tem­por­ary fen­cing, land­scap­ing and veget­a­tion to reduce sight­lines: Track reinstatement/​remov­al
• Rein­state­ment of vehicle tracks into inform­al paths

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 7 of 7 Event management

• Pre­sump­tion against large scale organ­ised events Park­ing management
• Remov­al of inform­al park­ing loc­a­tions and pro­vi­sion of alternatives
• Invest­ment in more form­al park­ing away from quiet area for nature Online and oth­er media messaging
• Social media cam­paigns focus­ing on sea­son­al activity