Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Dogs on leads in caper­cail­lie areas – pro­posed exten­sion of dates

1. Intro­duc­tion

There is wide con­sensus that this form of dis­turb­ance to caper­cail­lie can be mit­ig­ated through dogs being on leads dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son. This pos­i­tion has pre­vi­ously been sup­por­ted by the LOAF group (see sec­tion 4 below).

The cur­rent sig­nage in sens­it­ive caper­cail­lie areas states that dogs should be on a lead between 1 April and 15 August. This is a con­sist­ent mes­sage in use across the Park.

LOAF mem­bers are asked to:

• Con­sider an exten­sion to this peri­od from 15 August to 31 August.

1. Back­ground

Caper­cail­lie are an endangered spe­cies that are in decline with only 542 bird­s¹ left in the UK. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is home to over 85%¹ of these remain­ing caper­cail­lie. Through the pre­vi­ous Caper­cail­lie frame­work and cur­rent Caper­cail­lie pro­ject, much work has been under­taken by the Park Author­ity, land man­agers and part­ners to con­serve caper­cail­lie. How­ever, in the last five years caper­cail­lie num­bers have decreased by over 50%.

Research shows that being able to exer­cise dogs off-lead is the single most import­ant require­ment for people walk­ing dogs and that dog walk­ers spe­cific­ally seek places for off-lead activ­ity. This can cause caper­cail­lie to avoid areas of good hab­it­at, thereby lim­it­ing the amount of space they have to live. Research also shows that people with dogs are a great­er cause of dis­turb­ance to wild­life than people alone, and that lone dogs can flush birds 100% of the time. This can cause birds unne­ces­sary stress, force them to leave their nests in the case of ground-nest­ing birds like caper­cail­lie and can sep­ar­ate moth­ers from their depend­ent young.

Under the dir­ec­tion of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (June 2023), the Park Author­ity and NatureScot are to lead a co-ordin­ated action plan, to explore and deliv­er a range of options to halt the decline in caper­cail­lie populations.

The Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject is work­ing with the dog walk­ing com­munity to cre­ate and devel­op dog walk­ing spaces in Badenoch and Strath­spey, ideally in wood­lands and access­ible on foot from com­munit­ies, to meet the needs of dogs and their own­ers away from sens­it­ive areas for wildlife.

1. Reas­on for change

Through brood mon­it­or­ing and wild­life cam­era foot­age, loc­al RSPB staff have increas­ingly noted young chicks present until late August / early Septem­ber. It was observed that while these chicks could fly, they were still imma­ture, were not com­pet­ent fli­ers — strug­gling to gain height and some­times col­lid­ing with trees — and were slow to flush (fly off in response to danger).

RSPB staff, based on these obser­va­tions, felt that many of the broods they observed on the ground were still vul­ner­able to dogs off the lead at this time of year. The ques­tion was raised about chan­ging the dogs on leads signs from 15 August to 31 August to increase the chance of chick sur­viv­al and over­all breed­ing success.

This pro­posed date change was referred to the Scot­tish Caper­cail­lie Group for con­sid­er­a­tion. The group respon­ded that they were sup­port­ive of the recog­nised caper­cail­lie breed­ing sea­son being exten­ded to 31^st August.

NatureScot then con­firmed the recog­nised caper­cail­lie breed­ing sea­son as end­ing on 31 August. This has been pub­lished and NatureScot’s Policy and Advice Man­ager con­firmed that the exten­ded sea­son to 31 August could be used pub­licly with imme­di­ate effect.

1. Pre­vi­ous LOAF involvement

The LOAF has con­sul­ted on dog sig­nage in caper­cail­lie areas on sev­er­al pre­vi­ous occasions:

• 2010 — The LOAF group agreed that for pro­tec­ted sens­it­ive spe­cies the bird breed­ing sea­son mes­sage ​“keep dogs on leads” could be used, as opposed to

• the SOAC sug­ges­ted word­ing of ​“on a lead or under close con­trol”. It was agreed that a stronger line should be taken, which needed a clear and con­sist­ent message.

The caper­cail­lie BAP group advised that for caper­cail­lie the breed­ing and chick rear­ing sea­son ran from 1^st April — 15^th August this was adop­ted as the crit­ic­al time peri­od with­in which to adopt the stronger dogs on lead mes­saging in caper­cail­lie areas. 2013 — The caper­cail­lie BAP group reques­ted the LOAF to con­sider extend­ing the dog on leads peri­od to 31 August. This was fol­low­ing out­comes of dis­cus­sions which res­ul­ted in the lim­it­ing of ori­enteer­ing activ­it­ies in caper­cail­lie wood­lands until after 31 August.

The LOAF decided the peri­od should not be exten­ded and the recent pos­i­tion adop­ted in 2010 (1 April — 15 August) should be main­tained. 2021 — The LOAF in the con­text of dog walk­er sig­nage for sens­it­ive caper­cail­lie sites in Car­rbridge, con­firmed the pos­i­tion that request­ing dogs be on leads is con­sist­ent with SOAC.

1. Advice sought

Giv­en the con­text of the decline in caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tions and the instruc­tion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to take action, in addi­tion to the caper­cail­lie breed­ing sea­son now being recog­nised by NatureScot as 31 August:

Does the Cairngorms LOAF group sup­port the exten­sion of the peri­od for use of ​‘dogs on leads’ sig­nage, in sens­it­ive caper­cail­lie areas across the Park, from 15 August to 31 August?

The updated ​‘dogs on lead’ peri­od would then be 1 April — 31 August.

With regards to oth­er ground nest­ing birds, sig­nage will refer to the breed­ing sea­son as April to end of July. The use of ​“dogs on leads” will also apply to sched­ule one spe­cies of ground nest­ing bird that are sus­cept­ible to dis­turb­ance dur­ing the breed­ing season.

¹ Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject web­site, accessed 30/08/2023

² Pro­tec­ted spe­cies list — WCA sched­ules 1, 1A, A1, 2, 3 and 4 | NatureScot