230913 LOAF meeting notes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um Held online on Wed­nes­day 13^th Septem­ber 2023

Present: Hil­ary Quick(HQ) LOAF Ben Dol­phin (BD) LOAF/NTS Mar Lodge Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (EM) Park Author­ity Board John Gri­er­son (JG) LOAF – Chair Tre­vor Thorn­ley (TT) LOAF Adam Streeter-Smith (AQSS) Park Author­ity Colin Simpson (CS) Park Author­ity Vicky Hilton (VH) Park Authority

Apo­lo­gies: Mark Johnston

Wel­come and Minutes of last meet­ing on 8^th Feb­ru­ary 2023 Dis­cussed Action • JG wel­comed all to the meet­ing • Minutes of the last meet­ing approved • VH to devel­op fire guid­ance for groups. (Since actioned and cir­cu­lated to rangers)

1. Act­ive Cairngorms action plan Dis­cussed Action • AQSS gave stra­tegic over­view of action plan, rela­tion­ship to oth­er plans and con­tent. Some con­tent re- Cairngorms2030 around Green Health to be added. • JG on pro­ject board, work­ing on detail just now, aim is to cir­cu­late draft end this month. Going to Board 24^th Novem­ber. Envir­on­ment­al impact assess­ment and equal­it­ies assess­ment on plan being car­ried out. • Key points AQSS high­lighted — Quiet areas for nature (next agenda item):

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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• Paths & trails sec­tion. Core path plan review, mon­it­or­ing, people cent­ric. Will be some future dis­cus­sion / update on related items for LOAF group. • Man­aging for vis­it­ors work — Colin will update. • Opened for ques­tions Act­ive Cairngorms — no feed­back from LOAF mem­bers. • Colin updated on the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors dis­cus­sion at board last week. • Mostly around fires and poten­tial to con­sult regard­ing byelaws. Board had no strong pref­er­ence either for or against a byelaw, more inform­a­tion required. Likely to be a very open con­sulta­tion around fires, not spe­cific­ally recom­mend­ing byelaws. • May be implic­a­tions for Act­ive Cairngorms regard­ing enforce­ment / ranger role etc • BD raised point regard­ing leaf­lets (fire one use­ful) and sig­nage / SOAC (the need to be con­sist­ent with Code but flex­ible). • Next steps — final draft end month, cir­cu­late to loaf mem­bers for com­ment. AQSS

1. Quiet areas for Nature Dis­cussed Action • AQSS- Key point — not just Caper­cail­lie, ref­er­ence to Loch Kin­nord golden eye breed­ing impacted by recre­ation that LOAF been involved in agree­ing vol­un­tary man­age­ment agree­ments. • NPPP — action any­way to reduce dis­turb­ance but brought for­ward by Caper work. but would have been done any­way • Ini­tially work will focus on Caper, but ulti­mately be more wide ran­ging. eg Dot­ter­el at Cairngorm Moun­tain, moun­tain bike dam­age on plat­eau etc. • Will sup­port nation­al biod­iversity plan — focus halt­ing decline sens­it­ive spe­cies. • Will largely be vol­un­tary — can mon­it­or, if cata­stroph­ic fail­ure, can col­lect­ively take more action (last resort, ideally avoid).

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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• Will be based on spa­tial maps (not yet done), AQSS showed mocked up example of small loch and asso­ci­ated wood­land. NB maps will be a man­age­ment tool — will not be a pub­lished set of maps for pub­lic to see. Will be to guide man­age­ment activ­ity and sup­port decision mak­ing eg more ranger patrols or no large scale event per­mis­sions. Not about exclud­ing people from areas or redu­cing vis­it­or num­bers. • Aim — draft maps to take to board meet­ing in Novem­ber. EM left the meet­ing (con­nec­tion issues) • Short dis­cus­sion — mainly around mon­it­or­ing times­cales, what suc­cess looks like, evid­ence needed to jus­ti­fy quiet area. • LOAF mem­bers con­firmed sup­port for devel­op­ment of quiet areas.

1. Caper dog sea­son Dis­cussed Action • VH gave a quick update on the paper • JG quer­ied begin­ning of sea­son being earli­er • LOAF mem­bers con­firmed sup­port for extend­ing dog on leads sign to 31^st Aug.

2. Update paper Dis­cussed Action a) Spey­side Way: New path from bridge to Loch Insh in Kin­craig, works due to start shortly to remove crash bar­ri­er to allow offi­cial open­ing of path and new sec­tion of SW. b) Brae­mar to Kei­loch path: Raised path via gabi­on bas­kets. Even­tu­ally hoped this will form part of Deeside way exten­sion. Impt for Brae­mar com­munity net­work. c) Com­munity Path leaf­lets: Might come back to LOAF with regard to advice for new maps and access­ib­il­ity. • Dog friendly Cairngorms — new intern Wendy Mitchell in post.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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AOCB Dis­cussed Action • AQSS — 8 – 10 Nov Nation­al Parks UK access officers meet­ing to be held in the Cairngorms this year — invite for couple of mem­bers to join on any site vis­its / din­ner. AQSS will email around when have fur­ther details. AQSS • AQSS — Dal­whin­nie rail­way cross­ing. Park Author­ity and High­land Coun­cil meet­ing with Scot­ways soon. Reas­sur­ance to LOAF work pro­gress­ing and ongo­ing. • BD — Noted appre­ci­ation of Police Scot­land patrolling on Deeside. Review com­ing up, sus­pi­cion might not get again as was quieter peri­od when out. CS also noted mem­ber­ship of PS on Man­aging for Vis­it­ors group and con­struct­ive input there too. • AQSS — Quick ski tour­ing update. Access team invest­ig­ated leg­al pos­i­tion of ski tour­ers using down­hill pis­ted slopes. Mainly issues at Glenshee.

Date of next meet­ing January/​February 2024

Meet­ing closed 20:00