240628FBPaper3IWMPupdate

For Inform­a­tion

Title: Update on the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan

Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Management

Stra­tegic Context

1. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 — 27 Fire Man­age­ment actions (A7), are to: a) Devel­op an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan for the Nation­al Park, includ­ing stra­tegic firebreaks. b) Devel­op and agree a Nation­al Park approach on camp­fires and barbeques (covered in Fire Man­age­ment Byelaw, Paper 2).

Pur­pose To update the Board on the devel­op­ment of an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This paper dis­cusses pro­gress in the pre­par­a­tion of the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is asked to: a) Note pro­gress on devel­op­ment of the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan and next steps.

Stra­tegic policy consideration

1. The risk of dam­aging wild­fires is increas­ing across much of upland Scot­land. Chan­ging cli­mate pat­terns towards warm­er, wet­ter win­ters and hot­ter, drier sum­mers are becom­ing appar­ent. The James Hut­ton Insti­tute assess­ment of cli­mate change pro­jec­tions for the Cairngorms, com­mis­sioned by the Park Author­ity, indic­ates that the Nation­al Park will exper­i­ence fur­ther warm­ing over the com­ing dec­ades, as well as sea­son­al and spa­tial shifts in in pre­cip­it­a­tion dis­tri­bu­tion and a sub­stan­tial increase in the num­ber of con­sec­ut­ive dry days between May and October.

2. Wild­fires threaten man­made assets like houses, wind­farms, fences and oth­er built infra­struc­ture, and nat­ur­al assets like forests, peat­lands and immob­ile species.

3. The fin­an­cial cost of wild­fires can be high. Estim­ates for the cost of the Sad­dle­worth Moor wild­fire in 2018 run into many mil­lions of pounds for fire fight­ing and envir­on­ment­al damage.

4. The like­li­hood of igni­tion and the impact of wild­fire are chan­ging in the Nation­al Park as vis­it­or num­bers increase and chan­ging land man­age­ment prac­tices increase fuel loads in some places. Pub­lic con­cern around the wild­fire issue has ris­en in recent years. In light of these changes, the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP) takes a stra­tegic approach to assess­ing the like­li­hood of wild­fire, the impacts and oppor­tun­it­ies for mit­ig­at­ing and man­aging escal­at­ing risks.

Stake­hold­er engagement

1. Through­out 2023, the Park Author­ity has con­sul­ted widely with estate man­agers, those prac­tising muir­burn, wild­fire groups, land man­age­ment part­ner­ships, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue, rangers and oth­er stake­hold­ers to identi­fy the cur­rent situ­ation, key issues, grounds for col­lab­or­a­tion and oppor­tun­it­ies for stra­tegic, integ­rated plan­ning at land­scape scale.

2. A pro­posed struc­ture and con­tent to address issues and high­light oppor­tun­it­ies was dis­cussed with key stake­hold­ers includ­ing South Grampi­an Fire Group, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice and Chair of the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um. This was presen­ted at a wild­fire meet­ing atten­ded by pub­lic and private sec­tor interests fol­low­ing the Can­nich wild­fire in June 2023. It was sub­sequently dis­cussed and agreed with the Cairngorm Upland Advis­ory Group (CUAG), East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship, Cairngorms Con­nect and with indi­vidu­al estates and upland man­agers in the Park.

3. Fol­low­ing agree­ment of the approach to struc­ture and con­tent, the Park Author­ity has worked closely with stake­hold­ers in draft­ing the first two sec­tion of the IWMP. The con­clu­sion of dis­cus­sions on byelaws will feed into these drafts, at which point they will be ready for com­ments as final drafts.

Con­tent and structure

1. The IWMP will con­sist of three sec­tions. Sec­tion 1 out­lines pre­ven­tion meas­ures i.e. min­im­ising the risk of wild­fires start­ing. Sec­tion 2 out­lines the response to a wild­fire i.e. a level of pre­pared­ness and abil­ity to put out fires that do start. Sec­tion 3 explores how we build an accept­able level of wild­fire resi­li­ence into a chan­ging landscape.

2. Sec­tion 1 (Pre­ven­tion) will include assess­ments and recom­mend­a­tions for risk assess­ments of land hold­ings in rela­tion to wild­fire; ranger ser­vices and land man­ager patrols; com­mu­nic­a­tion and aware­ness rais­ing; and sig­nage. The con­clu­sions of the byelaw dis­cus­sion will feed into recom­mend­a­tions and options for pre­ven­tion and min­im­ising the risk of ignition.

3. Sec­tion 2 (Response) will include basic fire plans for each land­hold­ing; an assess­ment of fire man­age­ment skills in the Nation­al Park and any poten­tial train­ing require­ments; the avail­ab­il­ity and dis­tri­bu­tion of the Per­son­al Pro­tec­tion Equip­ment (PPE) and equip­ment resource; infra­struc­ture; the role of heli­copters and insur­ance neces­sary to cov­er costs; com­mu­nic­a­tion; and mod­els of col­lab­or­a­tion between landholdings.

4. Sec­tion 3 (Build­ing Resi­li­ence) recog­nises there are dif­fer­ent land man­age­ment object­ives in the Nation­al Park, which the IWMP must work with, not look to change. Whilst mature wood­land can sup­press fire, nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion and increased veget­a­tion height increases fuel load. Rewet­ted areas can act as nat­ur­al firebreaks but may only have lim­ited effect on intense and wide­spread wild­fires. This sec­tion of the plan will explore oppor­tun­it­ies for a Park wide approach to both man made and nat­ur­al firebreaks and oth­er means of build­ing resi­li­ence into the landscape.

Next steps

1. Chapters 1 and 2 will be con­cluded fol­low­ing final feed­back from Deer Man­age­ment Groups, Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice, wild­fire groups and Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group in Autumn 2024.

2. Con­cur­rently, Chapter 3 will be draf­ted with input from land man­agers and stake­hold­ers. A draft chapter 3 will be tabled at form­al groups and dis­cus­sion for­ums by Octo­ber 2023. Work on the IWMP will be presen­ted the UK Wild­fire Con­fer­ence in Aber­deen on 13 November.

3. At the board meet­ing in Novem­ber a draft of the IWMP will be presen­ted for dis­cus­sion and agree­ment for pub­lic con­sulta­tion in early 2025. The paper in Novem­ber will con­sider resource implic­a­tions, stra­tegic risk implic­a­tions and suc­cess meas­ures for the Park Authority.