240614Paper5PerfCtteeCapercaillieProject

Cairngorms Draft Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 5 14 June 2024 Page 1 of 5

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject Pre­pared by: Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change

Pur­pose This paper presents the final report on the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Project.

Recom­mend­a­tions In review­ing this final report, the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Agree the pro­ject has suc­cess­fully delivered the approved pur­poses. b) Note the project’s key achieve­ments and learn­ings. c) Con­sider any stra­tegic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant issues with pro­ject leg­acy planning.

Per­form­ance Overview

1. The pro­ject plan out­puts have been entirely achieved and the pro­ject has met or exceeded its quant­it­at­ive tar­gets, with only a few excep­tions due to the Cov­id 19 pan­dem­ic, e.g. volun­teer hours.

2. The project’s work has enabled deliv­ery of actions in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) 2023 — 2027: a) NPPP A13 Spe­cies Recov­ery action: deliv­er a work pro­gramme to sup­port caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion in the Cairngorms, based on best avail­able evid­ence. b) NPPP C8 action: con­sider all poten­tial mech­an­isms to reduce dis­turb­ance on key spe­cies and recre­ation­al impacts on high ground.

3. The project’s activ­it­ies and leg­acy will enable the deliv­ery of actions in the Cor­por­ate Plan (CP): a) CP A13: lead on a caper­cail­lie emer­gency plan and long-term strategy. b) CP A2: deliv­er 1,000 ha of new or expan­ded wood­land with new and innov­at­ive uses of the Forest Grant Scheme.

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c) CP C8: devel­op and deliv­er Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan – includ­ing pro­pos­als to reduce dis­turb­ance to key spe­cies and habitats.

Per­form­ance Dash­board: Com­ple­tion of the project’s Approved Purposes

Per­form­ance Meas­ure: Agreed pur­poses	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Empower com­munit­ies to help ensure the sur­viv­al of caper­cail­lie through com­munity led con­ser­va­tion, by imple­ment­ing the Car­rbridge Caper­cail­lie Con­ser­va­tion Strategy and devel­op­ing, agree­ing and imple­ment­ing action plans with addi­tion­al communities.	Green	Developed and delivered Action Plans with the vis­it­or, moun­tain bik­ing, dog walk­ing, busi­ness, Deeside and Car­rbridge com­munit­ies, and an addi­tion­al com­munity led cam­paign with the bird­watch­ing, pho­to­graphy and wild­life guid­ing community.
Raise aware­ness and increase under­stand­ing of the chal­lenges facing caper­cail­lie through a vari­ety of means includ­ing social media activ­it­ies and events, a new online engage­ment plat­form, volun­teer work, a pub­lic app, new resources for schools and genet­ics analysis.	Green	Engaged in 221 events and activ­it­ies with 4,218 par­ti­cipants. Volun­teers donated over 4,000 hours. The web­site has attrac­ted over 23,000 vis­it­ors. Social media pres­ence has garnered thou­sands of fol­low­ers and inter­ac­tions. Media cov­er­age has reached mil­lions of people through 107 pro­ject spe­cif­ic articles.
Work with landown­ers to imple­ment plans to improve and man­age around 9,000 hec­tares of hab­it­at across six estates for the bene­fit of caper­cail­lie; enable landown­ers to play their part in caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion via a third party grant scheme tar­get­ing land­hold­ings in caper­cail­lie areas.	Green	Suc­cess­fully sup­por­ted new, improved, or bet­ter-man­aged hab­it­at for caper­cail­lie across 10,133 hec­tares through part­ner­ships with land man­agers, imple­ment­ing large scale hab­it­at improve­ment plans, and sup­port­ing land man­agers via a pro­ject grant scheme.
Mon­it­or, test and eval­u­ate ideas through­out deliv­ery, apply­ing learn­ing from the pro­ject to refine activ­it­ies includ­ing hab­it­at improve­ment work, sur­vey tech­niques, pro­mo­tion­al activ­it­ies and the com­munity action plan­ning model.	Green	Work­shops, inter­views, films and reflect­ive gath­er­ings have fostered open dis­cus­sions and insight­ful stake­hold­er input. Shar­ing good prac­tice events and know­ledge exchange have all been well atten­ded and informed an adapt­ive approach. The pro­ject has been inde­pend­ently eval­u­ated through­out by an appoin­ted consultant.

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Per­form­ance Meas­ure: Agreed pur­poses	Rat­ing	Com­ment­ary
Devel­op an innov­at­ive and rep­lic­able mod­el for com­munity led spe­cies con­ser­va­tion that enables com­munit­ies to suc­cess­fully coex­ist with their nat­ur­al her­it­age, shar­ing the project’s find­ings intern­ally and extern­ally with UK organ­isa­tions, and fur­ther afield, to cre­ate a leg­acy of learning.	Green	Cre­ated the UK’s first com­munity led action plan for caper­cail­lie. Find­ings have been shared widely nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally at con­fer­ences, work­shops, in lit­er­at­ure and host­ing visits.Insights into devel­op­ing com­munity led con­ser­va­tion have fed into the devel­op­ment of Cairngorms 2030 and will under­pin the deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan.

Key achieve­ments

1. A present­a­tion of the pro­jects high­lights is avail­able in Pro­ject Overview

2. Sev­en com­munit­ies of interest and place have taken part and made valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to caper­cail­lie con­ser­va­tion: moun­tain bikers, busi­nesses, vis­it­ors, wild­life guides and bird­watch­ers, land man­agers, dog walk­ers and the Car­rbridge caper­cail­lie group.

3. The pro­ject has demon­strated adapt­ab­il­ity in cap­it­al­ising on com­munity led ini­ti­at­ives not ori­gin­ally in pro­ject plans e.g. the Cairngorms Gravel pro­ject, engage­ment with the dog walk­ing com­munity, and the Lek it Be cam­paign were all con­cepts gen­er­ated by com­munit­ies dur­ing the project.

4. Innov­at­ive mon­it­or­ing and research tech­niques have sig­ni­fic­antly con­trib­uted to the sci­entif­ic under­stand­ing of caper­cail­lie eco­logy and beha­viour. Work with the Roy­al Zoolo­gic­al Soci­ety for Scot­land (RZSS) WildGenes labor­at­ory has provided unique insights into the Scot­tish population.

5. Over 10,133 hec­tares of hab­it­at improved and over 1.3 km of fen­cing marked or removed. Sup­port and know­ledge shar­ing have increased the avail­ab­il­ity and uptake of new hab­it­at enhance­ment methods.

6. Increased capa­city and decision-mak­ing in the Badenoch and Strath­spey Trail Asso­ci­ation cre­ated a user led moun­tain bike recre­ation plan. This has so far pro­tec­ted over 450 hec­tares of hab­it­at from dis­turb­ance by moun­tain bik­ing activity

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in part by work­ing with land man­agers in the pro­ject to improve rid­ing exper­i­ences in less sens­it­ive areas.

1. Over the last five years the pro­ject has grown into a diverse part­ner­ship of over 25 organ­isa­tions and groups, includ­ing volun­teers who have donated over 4,000 hours of their time. Over 25,000 people have been engaged through events, activ­it­ies, Face­book, web­site and Ins­tagram, schools and volunteering.

Key learn­ings

1. Work with com­munit­ies of place and interest required both time, flex­ib­il­ity and clear para­met­ers. The approach required a will­ing­ness and abil­ity to work with uncer­tain­ties and to guide and sup­port, rather than con­trol. Sup­port for a community’s activ­ity relied on groups work­ing to a strong, demo­crat­ic man­date for action and the partnership’s col­lab­or­a­tion around agreed pro­ject outcomes.

2. The con­trol of pro­tec­ted spe­cies was clearly estab­lished from the out­set as being out­with the scope of the pro­ject. How­ever, pro­ject activ­it­ies were fre­quently framed in this con­text. Hav­ing ambas­sad­ors for the pro­ject with cred­ib­il­ity amongst dif­fer­ent stake­hold­er groups was import­ant in reen­for­cing pro­ject mes­sages and keep­ing com­plex part­ner­ships together.

3. Enga­ging and empower­ing a large and diverse part­ner­ship of groups and indi­vidu­als not nor­mally engaged with con­ser­va­tion per se is a power­ful way and more sus­tain­able approach to con­ser­va­tion than reli­ance on land man­agers, char­it­ies and pub­lic agen­cies. The sus­tain­ab­il­ity how­ever relies on sup­port and com­mit­ment for volun­teers and com­munity groups.

Stra­tegic implic­a­tions of Leg­acy Plans

1. Activ­it­ies to inform Park Author­ity stra­tegic plan­ning, strengthen inform­a­tion flow and sup­port adapt­ive pro­ject and leg­acy plan­ning are primar­ily delivered via embed­ding activ­it­ies in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan. Lead­er­ship and over­sight of the Emer­gency Plan will be co-man­aged by the Park Author­ity and NatureScot.

2. Activ­ity for min­im­ising dis­turb­ance in core caper­cail­lie areas is included in the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan. A pro­ject post has been exten­ded for 3 months (July –

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Septem­ber) to sup­port work with the dog walk­ing com­munity to under­pin the trans­ition and leg­acy planning.

1. Increas­ing caper­cail­lie num­bers is not a quan­ti­fied tar­get with­in the pro­ject, due to the many con­found­ing vari­ables affect­ing pop­u­la­tions, the rel­at­ively short times­cale and the pro­ject focus on com­munity-led approach to spe­cies con­ser­va­tion. Work on the Emer­gency Plan will ensure the Park Author­ity is com­mit­ting resource, with­in the scope of the Emer­gency Plan, but there remains a risk that con­ser­va­tion efforts do not halt decline.

Con­clu­sion

1. It is con­sidered the pro­ject has suc­cess­fully achieved deliv­ery of the Approved Pur­poses and ensured pro­ject achieve­ments are secured in leg­acy planning.

Andy Ford Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change andyford@​cairngorms.​co.​uk