250214Paper2Annex1draftIntegratedWildfireManagementPlan

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 44

Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan Draft for consultation

Con­tents

1. Intro­duc­tion
2. Plan Struc­ture
3. Redu­cing the risk of wild­fires starting
4. Improv­ing the effect­ive­ness of firefighting
5. Build­ing Wild­fire Resi­li­ence into a Chan­ging Landscape
6. Wild­fire and communities
7. Mon­it­or­ing and review
8. Sum­mary table of recom­mend­a­tions and actions

9. Annex 1: Example fire plan

10. Intro­duc­tion Wild­fires threaten man-made assets like houses, wind­farms, fences and oth­er built infra­struc­ture and they also threaten nat­ur­al assets like forests, peat­lands and immob­ile spe­cies. 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 fire­fight­ing and envir­on­ment­al dam­age. Pub­lic con­cern around the wild­fire issue has ris­en in recent years.

The Cli­mate in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park has already changed. These changes are spa­tially and tem­por­ally vari­able, with the winter months becom­ing both wet­ter and warm­er, whilst sum­mer months have become warm­er with vari­able con­sequences on the amount of water avail­able to enter into soils and aquat­ic systems.

Future pro­jec­tions indic­ate that the Park will exper­i­ence fur­ther warm­ing over the com­ing dec­ades, res­ult­ing in an increas­ing num­ber of dry days and num­ber of con­sec­ut­ive dry days, dur­ing sum­mer months. Large sec­tions of the Nation­al Park are likely to exper­i­ence spring and sum­mer sea­sons when there is a poten­tial decrease in Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 2 of 44 rain­fall. This will increase the risk of drier soils and veget­a­tion, with con­sequences on eco­lo­gic­al func­tions and the risk of wildfire.

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan object­ives to increase the amount of wood­land and nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion; reduce the neg­at­ive impacts of red deer and oth­er herb­i­vores; and increase spe­cies and hab­it­at diversity on moor­land will pro­duce many mul­tiple bene­fits for biod­iversity and cli­mate resi­li­ence. They will also increase field lay­er veget­a­tion in areas for a sig­ni­fic­ant peri­od of time. Large areas of mature wood­land and re-wet­ted areas will likely help cre­ate a more fire resi­li­ent land­scape in the future. How­ever, these hab­it­ats will take many years to devel­op and dur­ing the inter­ven­ing peri­od fuel loads will increase, as will the cor­res­pond­ing need for fire risk mitigation.

Land man­agers have been man­aging wild­fire risk in the Nation­al Park for many years. In light of the increased need for wild­fire plan­ning and the demands this may place on land man­agers, this plan aims to provide sup­port and guid­ance for land man­agers across the Nation­al Park to increase their abil­ity to: • Min­im­ise the risk of wild­fires start­ing; • Respond effect­ively to wild­fires; and • Mit­ig­ate impacts of wild­fires in the landscape.

1. Plan struc­ture The Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan con­sists of four sections.

2.1 Redu­cing the risk of igni­tion. In Scot­land vir­tu­ally all sig­ni­fic­ant wild­fires are star­ted by human action, mostly acci­dent­al but some­times delib­er­ate. The most import­ant task in mit­ig­at­ing the risk of wild­fires is to reduce the chances of one start­ing in the first place. Wild­fire pre­ven­tion involves land man­agers assess­ing where on their land there is most inter­ac­tion between people and flam­mable fuels, it involves ranger ser­vices and patrolling, sig­nage and wider pub­lic edu­ca­tion, a fire byelaw, and may involve the pro­vi­sion of safe facil­it­ies for camp­fires and barbeques, with landown­er permission.

This sec­tion includes: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 3 of 44 • Risk assess­ment of land­hold­ings in rela­tion to wild­fire. • Ranger ser­vices and land man­ager patrols. • Sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions to the pub­lic. • Policy around camp­fires and barbeques.

2.2 Improv­ing the effect­ive­ness of fire­fight­ing when wild­fires occur. Estate fire plans are the primary mech­an­ism for land man­agers in man­aging wild­fire. This sec­tion provides guid­ance on estab­lish­ing a stand­ard­ised, high level of pre­pared­ness on all land­hold­ings, focus­sing on fire plans for indi­vidu­al land hold­ings. It includes equip­ment and train­ing for staff who might respond to a wild­fire, and mod­els of col­lab­or­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion between those who attend a wild­fire. The role of an estate office can be cru­cial in a wild­fire and this role has a train­ing require­ment. The use of heli­copters, includ­ing the author­ity to request heli­copter assist­ance and adequate insur­ance to pay for heli­copter costs, are all import­ant issues.

This sec­tion includes: • Basic fire plans in map form. • Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) and fire­fight­ing equip­ment. • Train­ing for staff likely to be involved in any fire­fight­ing. • Train­ing at estate office level. • Com­mu­nic­a­tions at a fire. • The role and respons­ib­il­it­ies of Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS). • Mod­els of col­lab­or­a­tion between estates. • The role of fire groups. • Invest­ment in skills and equip­ment. • Heli­copters and insurance.

2.3 Build­ing wild­fire resi­li­ence in chan­ging land­scapes. Many land man­agers want to increase wood­land cov­er, the extent of scrub or the struc­tur­al diversity of veget­a­tion. This can bene­fit biod­iversity and increase car­bon sequest­ra­tion. How­ever increased struc­tur­al diversity in veget­a­tion leads to increased fuel loads for wild­fires. Land man­agers are bal­an­cing the bene­fits of increased veget­a­tion with the risk of more intense wild­fires. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 4 of 44 Wild­fires in high fuel loads can eas­ily be bey­ond the capa­city of fire-fight­ers on the ground to con­trol effect­ively. Break­ing up areas of high fuel loads would help fire- fight­ers tackle wild­fires. This sec­tion dis­cusses how this might be done with­in the con­text of land man­age­ment object­ives, and the issues land man­agers might con­sider around wild­fire resi­li­ence on their landholdings.

Inform­a­tion in this sec­tion is inten­ded to provide guid­ance to land man­agers in ini­ti­at­ing a pro­cess of identi­fy­ing and pri­or­it­ising assets of all kinds; and sub­sequently map­ping out the most appro­pri­ate pro­tect­ive meas­ures at both an estate level and col­lect­ively at land­scape-scale, for example through Deer Man­age­ment Groups and land­scape partnerships.

This sec­tion includes: • Involving all land man­agers, across the spec­trum of land man­age­ment object­ives in the Nation­al Park, in a respect­ful dis­cus­sion. • What con­sti­tutes a firebreak and how they can be cre­ated, main­tained and man­aged. • Fre­quency of firebreaks in the land­scape. • Build­ing and retain­ing capa­city, skills and experience.

2.4 Risk assess­ment of vul­ner­able com­munit­ies Wild­fires can threaten scattered hous­ing and set­tle­ments. The risk to prop­erty from wild­fire is gen­er­ally very low but there have been occa­sions when wild­fire has threatened isol­ated houses in the High­lands in recent years. Pro­tect­ing people and prop­erty is para­mount in fire man­age­ment plan­ning. This sec­tion of the Plan iden­ti­fies the main factors to con­sider when assess­ing the level of risk to set­tle­ments, provides an over­view of set­tle­ments in the Nation­al Park, and encour­ages land man­agers to work closely with com­munit­ies in assess­ing risk and mit­ig­a­tion. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 5 of 44

1. Redu­cing the risk of wild­fires starting

3.1 Wild­fire risk assess­ment on a land hold­ing Every land man­ager should risk assess their land hold­ing in rela­tion to wild­fire. The aim of wild­fire risk assess­ment is twofold:

1. It enables land man­agers to tar­get meas­ures which reduce the risk of igni­tion, for example identi­fy­ing where ranger patrols are most needed; and
2. It enables land man­agers to spa­tially tar­get meas­ures which may enable a wild­fire to be con­tained, for example firebreaks.

Wild­fire risk assess­ments identi­fy where people are most likely to start fires, for example at reg­u­lar camp­ing loc­a­tions and pic­nic spots; and where fuel loads are likely to be high, unbroken and con­tinu­ous. Areas of high risk are likely to occur where people inter­act most with high fuel loads. Mit­ig­a­tion to reduce risk should then be con­sidered a pri­or­ity at these points.

Wild­fire risk assess­ments then identi­fy the assets which are at risk. These may be build­ings, infra­struc­ture, nat­ur­al resources or places where people are likely to be. The vul­ner­ab­il­ity of each asset to wild­fire should be assessed and means of pro­tect­ing them considered.

When con­duct­ing a wild­fire risk assess­ment, land man­agers should con­sider neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties, both in terms of fire spread­ing from a neigh­bour­ing prop­erty onto their own land and the oth­er way around.

Wild­fire risk assess­ment is not an action which should only be car­ried out at peri­ods of high fire risk. Wild­fire risk assess­ment is not stat­ic. Fuel loads may change over time as may the beha­viour of people. Assess­ments should be adapt­ive and car­ried out at least once every three years. The Park Author­ity will main­tain a register of fire plans and work with estates and land­hold­ings to sup­port their devel­op­ment and review.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Every three years land man­agers should pro­act­ively risk assess their land hold­ing in rela­tion to wild­fire. To do this they should: • Assess high risk areas, where people are most likely to inter­act with high fuel loads. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 6 of 44 • Identi­fy meth­ods for mit­ig­at­ing the risk of igni­tion and the impact of wild­fire in the event of one start­ing. • Identi­fy assets which could be at risk and which are pri­or­it­ised for pro­tec­tion. • Map assets and areas of high risk and identi­fy means of pro­tec­tion. • Con­sider the wild­fire risk man­age­ment of neighbours.

3.2 Vis­it­or Man­age­ment The Cairngorms are a pop­u­lar des­tin­a­tion with an estim­ated two mil­lion vis­it­ors in 2019. Cov­id-19 stim­u­lated a marked increase in camp­ing and the light­ing of recre­ation­al fires. Post lock­down, many vis­it­ors were camp­ing for the first time and had little or no know­ledge of the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC), guid­ance on camp­ing and the use of camp­fires. The pop­ular­ity of camp­ing has con­tin­ued up to the present day with large num­bers of people camp­ing inform­ally and light­ing camp­fires at pop­u­lar sites such as Loch Mor­lich, Loch Kinord and the River Clunie near Brae­mar. This causes com­munity con­cern, par­tic­u­larly where camp­fires are being lit close to high fuel loads and to set­tle­ments. Large wild­fires at Can­nich and Dav­i­ot in the dry June of 2023 added to those con­cerns. Sig­ni­fic­ant efforts have been made by the Park Author­ity, Police Scot­land and oth­er agen­cies to curb irre­spons­ible beha­viour, through edu­ca­tion ini­ti­at­ives and dir­ect requests.

3.3 Cur­rent approach to the man­age­ment of recre­ation­al fires Cur­rently, activ­ity to man­age the use of recre­ation­al fires in the Nation­al Park is under­taken jointly by landown­ers / man­agers, the Park Author­ity and pub­lic sec­tor part­ners includ­ing Police Scot­land. Many land man­agers will do this through site sig­nage and face-to face engage­ment with vis­it­ors, using their own ranger ser­vices or oth­er estate staff. The Park Author­ity ranger ser­vice com­ple­ments this with addi­tion­al patrols at pop­u­lar sites, where rangers provide advice to vis­it­ors and, where neces­sary, extin­guish fires con­sidered to be unsafe. Rangers also under­take patrols where they remove evid­ence of pre­vi­ous fires to try and reduce ​‘copycat’ behaviour.

To com­ple­ment this dir­ect engage­ment activ­ity, the Park Author­ity also under­takes com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity around fires both loc­ally and with nation­al part­ners. This includes pre-arrival activ­ity through the media and pop­u­lar social media chan­nels, pro­mo­tion of a leaf­let that is used by the Park Author­ity rangers and part­ner ranger ser­vices, and Scot­tish Out­door Access Code com­pli­ant sig­nage. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 7 of 44 3.4 Cur­rent legis­la­tion The law con­cern­ing who can light a fire in Scot­land, where and when, and how to man­age annoy­ance and the poten­tial for dam­age or danger, is com­plex. Sev­er­al pieces of legis­la­tion are rel­ev­ant, includ­ing: • The Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 (as amended in 2003), • The Civic Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1982 • The Roads (Scot­land) Act 1984 and • The Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003

This com­plex­ity can present com­mu­nic­a­tion chal­lenges and enforce­ment is very dif­fi­cult. Pro­sec­u­tions relat­ing to fires or the issu­ing of fixed pen­alty notices are very rare.

The Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 mod­i­fied the Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 to make clear that the pro­hib­i­tion of fires does not extend to any­thing done by a per­son who is exer­cising access rights. An offence under the Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 remains in full effect if the per­son is out­with access rights – for instance, for people fish­ing, or in places out­with access rights (eg where crops are grow­ing). The SOAC provides fur­ther guid­ance on the applic­a­tion of the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 and gives the fol­low­ing guid­ance in rela­tion to fires: • Wherever pos­sible, use a stove rather than light an open fire. • If you do wish to light an open fire, keep it small, under con­trol, and super­vised – fires that get out of con­trol can cause major dam­age, for which you might be liable. • Remove all traces of an open fire before you leave. • Nev­er light an open fire dur­ing pro­longed dry peri­ods or in areas such as forests, woods, farm­land or on peaty ground, or near to build­ings or in cul­tur­al her­it­age sites where dam­age can be eas­ily caused. • Heed all advice at times of high risk.

While SOAC does include guid­ance on when and where fires are or are not allowed, this guid­ance is not always effect­ive. This is in part due to its com­plex­ity – for example, there will be many instances where people are not aware wheth­er they are on peaty ground. In addi­tion, where someone fails to com­ply with the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 or SOAC the sanc­tion is that they lose their right of access. This can only be done by going through the nor­mal judi­cial pro­cess which in effect means enforce­ment is quite dif­fi­cult. Neither the Park Author­ity nor landown­ers (includ­ing oth­er pub­lic sec­tor landown­ers) Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 8 of 44 have any powers of enforce­ment and so would be required to involve Police Scot­land, who in turn would have to take a case to the Pro­cur­at­or Fisc­al Ser­vice, who would decide wheth­er to take it to court.

For much of the year there is little risk of wild­fire. Fuels are damp and plants con­tain suf­fi­cient mois­ture to make them fire res­ist­ant. How­ever, when fuels dry out Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments are made by the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um and peri­ods of Very High Risk or Extreme Risk are com­mu­nic­ated to a wide range of stake­hold­ers includ­ing the land man­age­ment com­munity via email. Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS) then com­mu­nic­ate Very High Risk to the pub­lic through social media which is amp­li­fied by a range of agen­cies and indi­vidu­als. Land man­agers will sim­ul­tan­eously be mak­ing their own inform­al assess­ments of fire risk as they observe weath­er and fuel con­di­tions on their own land.

The cur­rent Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ment works well and is well received by land man­agers and agen­cies. It is based on good sci­ence and warn­ings are effect­ively and rap­idly com­mu­nic­ated. How­ever, the sys­tem is not robust as it is built around one key indi­vidu­al. A pro­ject plan is now being devised through the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um to build a more robust sys­tem which has great­er human capacity.

Cru­cially know­ledge of how to use and inter­pret European Forest Fire Inform­a­tion Sys­tem (EFF­IS) data should be spread around a num­ber of indi­vidu­als. The Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um plays an import­ant role in dis­sem­in­at­ing the Wild­fire Danger Assess­ments to estates and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als asso­ci­ated with man­aging wild­fire risk. There is also a need for clear mes­saging to mem­bers of the pub­lic. Clar­ity of lines of com­mu­nic­a­tions is cru­cial in any new system.

The Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice will work closely with the Park Author­ity and land man­agers to update and imple­ment the Danger Rat­ing sys­tem to meet the needs of all users.

3.5 Com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups for wild­fire inform­a­tion The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Birds (RSPB) have set up a What­s­App group for the com­munity around Nethy Bridge and Aber­nethy. This is used exclus­ively for trans­mit­ting fire related inform­a­tion and con­tent is over­seen by the admin­is­trat­or accord­ingly. People mes­sage if they see smoke or someone set­ting up a barbe­que in a vul­ner­able area. Rangers and oth­er estate staff can then respond rap­idly if required. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 9 of 44 Such a group, What­s­App is one of sev­er­al pos­sible com­mu­nic­a­tions apps, could be used to organ­ise resources at a wild­fire and to ensure only the appro­pri­ate amount of resource is deployed on site. This com­mu­nic­a­tions group is a use­ful ini­ti­at­ive with the poten­tial for a wider net­work of such groups, based around com­munit­ies and with suit­able admin­is­tra­tion so they remain for the use of fire related mes­sages only. Should land man­agers and com­munit­ies be inter­ested in set­ting up sim­il­ar groups, the Park Author­ity will facil­it­ate and sup­port their establishment.

3.6 Sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions mater­i­al There are sig­ni­fic­ant com­plex­it­ies in com­mu­nic­at­ing with the pub­lic around the dangers of wild­fires. In addi­tion to the com­plic­ated leg­al pos­i­tion and tech­nic­al detail con­tained with­in SOAC, the fol­low­ing ele­ments should be con­sidered when pulling togeth­er sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions mater­i­als: • A sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion (27%) of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park come from over­seas and a major­ity of those will not speak Eng­lish as a first lan­guage. The need for both sim­pli­city and con­sist­ency of mes­sage will, there­fore, be para­mount. • There are over 150 dif­fer­ent land­hold­ings in the Nation­al Park, ran­ging in size from under 100 hec­tares to over 40,000 hec­tares. Whilst the Park Author­ity will be coordin­at­ing work in this area, it does not own any land with­in the Nation­al Park. A com­mon approach or frame­work for wild­fire sig­nage – and wider mes­saging – will be required that bal­ances indi­vidu­al part­ner brand require­ments with the need for abso­lute clar­ity. • The audi­ence for this mater­i­al is extremely var­ied, from long-dis­tance vis­it­ors to loc­al res­id­ents and work­ers, mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the ​‘order’ in which inform­a­tion is pro­cessed. Vis­it­ors also use a wide range of tools to inform their vis­it, from third-party web­sites and social media to on-site sig­nage, ranger / staff inter­ac­tions and part­ner con­tent. Rather than treat­ing these dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tions chan­nels in isol­a­tion, they should all be con­sidered as part of a single work­stream. • Giv­en that the pro­posed ​‘no fires’ peri­od coin­cides with the busiest parts of the vis­it­or sea­son, any sig­nage / com­mu­nic­a­tions require­ments will need to be simple to rol­lout and easy to imple­ment for part­ners on the ground. Sim­il­arly, there needs to be a simple and con­sist­ent means of noti­fy­ing part­ners of any changes as they arise, to avoid mixed mes­saging in dif­fer­ent parts of the Nation­al Park. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 10 of 44 • All sig­nage and comms mater­i­als will need to sit along­side exist­ing SOAC guid­ance, Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments etc and avoid mixed messaging.

In devel­op­ing sig­nage and oth­er mater­i­al for wild­fires and poten­tial fire byelaws, the Park Author­ity there­fore pro­poses a three-stage pro­cess, informed by close col­lab­or­a­tion with part­ner estates, Non-Gov­ern­ment­al Organ­isa­tions (NGOs) and oth­er pub­lic bodies.

First, we will work with part­ners across the Nation­al Park and across related agen­cies (eg Vis­itScot­land and NatureScot) to identi­fy a long­list of key loc­a­tions and / or chan­nels to deliv­er wild­fire mes­saging to tar­get audiences.

Second, we will work with a spe­cial­ist con­tract­or to devel­op a simple com­mu­nic­a­tions frame­work for wild­fires, under­pinned by best-avail­able evid­ence on influ­en­cing vis­it­or / audi­ence beha­viour. This frame­work will not be designed for any one chan­nel or plat­form but instead will be adapt­able to everything from a face-to-face con­ver­sion to a road­side sign.

The final stage will involve the cre­ation of chan­nel-spe­cif­ic mater­i­als based on the above frame­work, includ­ing but not lim­ited to: • Road­side sig­nage. • Part­ner sig­nage (incor­por­at­ing part­ner brand­ing). • Scrip­ted ele­ments to guide face-to-face con­ver­sa­tions. • Video mater­i­als. • Social media and oth­er digit­al advert­ising assets. • Media lines and key mes­sages. • Face-to-face event materials.

Work­ing with exist­ing for­ums and part­ner­ships, includ­ing the Cairngorms Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group and the Nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Coordin­a­tion Group, newly estab­lished com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups, land man­agers and oth­er busi­nesses and organ­isa­tions with a role in com­mu­nic­at­ing with vis­it­ors, will help ensure the effect­ive coordin­a­tion of inform­a­tion, and a dynam­ic, adapt­ive approach. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 11 of 44 3.7 Fire byelaw con­sulta­tion Pub­lic con­cern around wild­fire has grown in recent years. This has been driv­en by sev­er­al factors includ­ing media cov­er­age of glob­al wild­fires, grow­ing under­stand­ing of the likely con­sequences of cli­mate change, changes in beha­viour fol­low­ing Cov­id lock­downs and pro­longed peri­ods of dry weath­er. In response to pub­lic con­cern, the Park Author­ity launched a con­sulta­tion on fire man­age­ment, includ­ing the poten­tial intro­duc­tion of fire byelaws in Feb­ru­ary 2024. A con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment out­lined three poten­tial ways for­ward: a no byelaw option, a byelaw at times of high fire risk, and a year-round byelaw.

The con­sulta­tion received a total of 1664 responses which came from Park res­id­ents, vis­it­ors and land man­agers. Almost 80% of respond­ents thought a fire man­age­ment byelaw was part of the solu­tion to tackle wild­fire risk. There was no clear pref­er­ence on wheth­er there should be a year-round restric­tion on light­ing fires, or a restric­tion based on wild­fire risk. In Septem­ber 2024 the Park Author­ity Board decided that a sea­son­al byelaw, run­ning from 01 April to 30 Septem­ber each year, would be the most appro­pri­ate approach. The pro­posed byelaw is with Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approval.

Any byelaw is likely to include exemp­tions where fires can be lit with landown­er per­mis­sion. This excep­tion might encom­pass organ­ised groups, for example Scout camps. Depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, ded­ic­ated facil­it­ies for organ­ised groups offer a much safer and more man­age­able exper­i­ence, which reduces the risk of fires being lit elsewhere.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Land man­agers should con­sider when and where they might give per­mis­sion to organ­ised groups for fires to be lit.

1. Improv­ing the effect­ive­ness of fire­fight­ing when a wild­fire occurs

4.1 Estate fire plans Wild­fires are high pres­sure events which test plan­ning sys­tems and decision makers. There are mul­tiple vari­ables involved, includ­ing loc­a­tion, ter­rain, wind, weath­er and fuel Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 12 of 44 load. Wild­fires may devel­op quite rap­idly and there is lim­ited time to refer to a pre­script­ive plan. When fight­ing a grow­ing wild­fire, trained, exper­i­enced indi­vidu­als are required, able to make decisions about what resources are required to tackle a fire and how those resources should be deployed.

Whilst detailed writ­ten plans are unlikely to be used when deal­ing with the incid­ent, the plan­ning pro­cess is crit­ic­al. As the basis for all fire man­age­ment plan­ning in the Nation­al Park, it is strongly recom­men­ded each land­hold­ing has, at least, a basic Fire Plan which includes the fol­low­ing: • Basic prop­erty inform­a­tion: the own­er, their con­tact details and the con­tact details of key per­son­nel. • Inform­a­tion on neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties and their con­tact details. • A map show­ing prop­erty bound­ar­ies, ren­dez­vous points, access roads, locked gates, bridge rat­ings, fire ponds or water sup­ply points. This map should be on a stand­ard Ord­nance Sur­vey (OS) back­ground at a scale of 1:25000 or 1:50000 so is under­stand­able to all. • Grid ref­er­ences (or What3words) for the loc­a­tions of ren­dez­vous points. • Instruc­tions on who to call out if assist­ance is required. On large estates this will start with the estate’s own intern­al resources but should also include neigh­bours, mem­bers of a Fire Group if applic­able and Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice con­trol room. Call out lists and con­tact details should be updated annu­ally. • A list of rel­ev­ant equip­ment held by the estate, its ser­vi­cing require­ments and check­list of when last ser­viced. • Instruc­tions on who has author­ity to call for heli­copter assist­ance if required.

Con­tact details and oth­er inform­a­tion in the Fire Plan will change. Each Fire Plan must be maintained/​updated annu­ally and should be shared with SFRS.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Every land­hold­ing should pre­pare a basic Fire Plan as described above. Example fire plan in Annex 1.

4.2 Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) is essen­tial for those fight­ing a wild­fire and oth­er per­son­nel work­ing at wild­fires to ensure their safety. The spe­cif­ic PPE require­ments may Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 13 of 44 vary depend­ing on the tasks being per­formed, but any­one involved in fight­ing flames should wear the fol­low­ing PPE: • Fire res­ist­ant cloth­ing which does not ignite or melt when exposed to flames. This often takes the form of a fire-res­ist­ant boil­er suit and is best in bright col­ours to max­im­ise the chance of being seen by oth­ers in smoke or poor vis­ib­il­ity. • A face shield which pro­tects the face from radi­ant heat, and which pro­tects the eyes from ash and dust. This may take the form of a Per­spex shield. Face shields can leave ears and neck exposed to radi­ant heat and fire­fight­ers should con­sider how best to cov­er those when close to flames. • Fire res­ist­ant gloves which pro­tect hands from radi­ant heat and from dir­ect con­tact with hot sur­faces such as the met­al handle of a fire broom or scrub­ber. • Boots that will res­ist heat while per­mit­ting safe walk­ing in rough ter­rain. • Fire­fight­ing may involve close prox­im­ity to vehicles and All-Ter­rain Vehicles (ATV) and con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to pro­tect­ive toe caps to reduce the risk of injury. How­ever, steel toe caps can heat up when close to flames and there is a bal­ance of risk to be made here. • Wild­fires gen­er­ate a lot of smoke and fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter. It can be dif­fi­cult to avoid some smoke inhal­a­tion when fight­ing a wild­fire. It is unlikely that estates will equip staff with res­pir­at­ory gear as this is expens­ive and requires spe­cial­ist train­ing. How­ever, those fight­ing wild­fires may feel more com­fort­able if they wear masks over their mouths and nose.

There are dif­fer­ent roles for people at a wild­fire and many will not be exposed to heat, smoke or flames. How­ever, wild­fire is unpre­dict­able and unex­pec­ted flare ups may occur. In gen­er­al people attend­ing a wild­fire should wear clothes which are vis­ible, and which do not eas­ily ignite or melt. Nat­ur­al fibres like wool are reas­on­ably fire res­ist­ant and provide mod­er­ate pro­tec­tion against heat and flames. Leath­er gar­ments can also give good protection.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Indi­vidu­als who might have to tackle a wild­fire should be equipped with adequate PPE. Lar­ger land­hold­ings should con­sider hav­ing a stock of PPE avail­able for more gen­er­al use. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 14 of 44 4.3 Equip­ment for fight­ing a fire All sig­ni­fic­ant land­hold­ings in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park should have some basic equip­ment with which to fight fires. At the least, each estate should carry a stock of fire beat­ers or scrub­bers which can be used to tackle rel­at­ively low flame heights. Leaf blowers have become a rel­at­ively recent innov­a­tion in fire­fight­ing and can be highly effect­ive in many con­di­tions. As these are multi-pur­pose machines, they may be a good value option for estates wish­ing to build a stock of fire-fight­ing equipment.

Fires in very dry con­di­tions can be extremely dif­fi­cult to put out by beat­ing, scrub­bing or by leaf blowers and these require the applic­a­tion of water or anoth­er wet­ting agent. Hand oper­ated fire fight­ing back­packs can enable rel­at­ively small volumes of water to be brought to a site quickly and can help tackle small fires or re-ignitions.

Large wild­fires need to be fought with large volumes of water. One of the key tasks of a man­ager when tack­ling a large wild­fire is to ensure that a steady sup­ply of water can be applied to the fire via ATV moun­ted fire fog­ging units. Fire fog­ging units are extremely effect­ive in fight­ing fires with flame lengths of up to three meters. Fire fog­ging units need to be con­tinu­ously replen­ished so the devel­op­ment of a chain of water where fire fog­ging units can be filled either from nat­ur­al water sup­plies, from fire ponds or from bow­sers is a key task in fire­fight­ing. In the absence of suit­able water bod­ies, land hold­ings with access to farm machinery should con­sider what equip­ment might be used to trans­port large volumes of water to the vicin­ity of a fire so fire fog­ging units can be con­tinu­ously replen­ished. There are a range of fire fog­ging units on the mar­ket, and these can be car­ried by a range of ATVs.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Equip­ment and machinery require­ments will vary accord­ing to landholding’s needs. It is recom­men­ded that: • All land­hold­ings should carry a stock of fire beat­ers, scrub­bers or leaf blowers appro­pri­ate to their needs. • All land­hold­ings should con­sider wheth­er car­ry­ing a stock of fire fight­ing back­packs would be appro­pri­ate. • Land hold­ings over 1000ha should have ready access to a machine-moun­ted fire fog­ging unit. • All rel­ev­ant estate staff should be famil­i­ar with the use of equip­ment above. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 15 of 44 Recom­mend­a­tion: Sig­ni­fic­ant fire­fight­ing assets, includ­ing farm machinery cap­able of trans­port­ing large volumes of water, should be registered on the Com­munity Asset Register.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Min­im­ise dis­tances that fire­fight­ers need to travel to replen­ish water sup­plies in a fire fog­ging unit and con­sider how to ensure fire fog­ging units can access all or most parts of a landholding.

4.4 Train­ing Fight­ing a wild­fire involves a degree of risk from flames, smoke, strenu­ous exer­cise, trips and falls etc. All per­son­nel who are likely to be involved in fight­ing a wild­fire should be adequately trained to do so. SFRS will not allow untrained per­son­nel to help at a wild­fire in any fire­fight­ing role.

Wild­fires them­selves are obvi­ously not train­ing envir­on­ments so attend­ance on a recog­nised Muir­burn train­ing course is strongly recom­men­ded. The Muir­burn Prac­ti­tion­er Found­a­tion Course is a LANTRA approved course and is recog­nised by NatureScot and the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice. Oth­er courses may also be avail­able. Cur­rently this train­ing is delivered by Bright Sparks Burn­ing Tech­niques Ltd but oth­er train­ing pro­viders may come into the mar­ket over time. Par­ti­cipants must first com­plete a free e- learn­ing pack­age which cov­ers the Muir­burn Code. A second prac­tic­al mod­ule includes train­ing on: • Identi­fy­ing the cor­rect PPE. • The safe use of hand tools. • The safe use of mech­an­ic­al equip­ment. • Weath­er con­sid­er­a­tions includ­ing Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments. • Iden­ti­fic­a­tion and cre­ation of fire breaks. • Safely apply­ing fire. • Safely extin­guish­ing fire, includ­ing post burn mon­it­or­ing. • Com­mu­nic­a­tions. • Team safety and wellbeing

Recom­mend­a­tion: Employ­ers ensure their staff who may be involved in fire­fight­ing are adequately trained Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 16 of 44 There are many roles at a wild­fire which do not involve fight­ing flames and where train­ing may not be required. People may be required to provide dir­ec­tions, organ­ise traffic or to ensure fire­fight­ers have drink­ing water and food.

Many estate staff are well prac­tised and equipped to fight wild­fires. This is par­tic­u­larly the case on estates where muir­burn is reg­u­larly prac­ticed. People who reg­u­larly con­duct muir­burn under­stand fire beha­viour and are prac­ticed in fire­fight­ing tech­niques. They under­stand the equip­ment which is neces­sary to fight a fire, and this equip­ment is main­tained and used reg­u­larly. It is vital these skills are retained in the Nation­al Park, and there is con­tin­ued invest­ment in equipment.

Estates which do not routinely con­duct muir­burn should con­sider altern­at­ive approaches to ensur­ing staff are trained to fight wild­fires, for example: • Loan­ing out staff to help oth­ers con­duct muir­burn. • The burn­ing of firebreaks, to break up con­tinu­ous high fuel loads and to pro­tect key assets, builds fire­fight­ing famili­ar­ity and skills. • Reg­u­lar fire drills and fire­fight­ing equip­ment practice

Some estates have noted a decline in staff skills with regard to fire­fight­ing fol­low­ing decisions to use muir­burn less. Wild­fires occur irreg­u­larly and there may be sev­er­al years between cal­louts. Unless train­ing is main­tained, staff can eas­ily become unfa­mil­i­ar with fire­fight­ing equip­ment, and main­ten­ance of equip­ment may decline lead­ing to fail­ures when needed. Staff will also become pro­gress­ively less famil­i­ar with fire beha­viour and fire­fight­ing techniques.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Estates which do not con­duct muir­burn reg­u­larly should devel­op approaches to staff train­ing and famil­i­ar­isa­tion with firefighting.

4.5 The role of the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice at a wild­fire When in attend­ance, the SFRS is in over­all com­mand of the incid­ent and will ini­ti­ate their Incid­ent Com­mand Sys­tem (ICS). This is likely to include a rep­res­ent­at­ive of the landown­er as the Wild­fire Incid­ent Liais­on Officer (WILO) (this name is cur­rently under review by SFRS and may change). The WILO will act as the con­duit for com­mu­nic­a­tions between SFRS and the Land Man­ager. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 17 of 44 Land man­agers will retain their own lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion at all times, espe­cially to ensure the health and safety of their own staff. How­ever, this must be in con­junc­tion with require­ments from SFRS.

An Incid­ent Tac­tic­al Plan should be developed as soon as pos­sible by the Fire Ser­vice Incid­ent Com­mand­er. This should be developed with input from the WILO.

Any requests for sup­port from SFRS to the land man­ager should be via the WILO.

WILO tasks might include (not exhaust­ive): • Identi­fy them­selves to SFRS: • a) Report any miss­ing Per­son­nel. b) Report risks or haz­ards asso­ci­ated with the land. c) Report any per­son­nel already deployed includ­ing where they are, what they are doing, equip­ment in use. d) Identi­fy access points and routes. e) Describe infra­struc­ture (turn­ing points/​roadways/​water supplies/​weak bridges/​boundaries/​etc. f) Report avail­able resources (equipment/​vehicles/​personnel) • Attend multi-agency meet­ings. • Liais­on with oth­er non-SFRS respon­ders. • Agree han­dover of respons­ib­il­ity from SFRS to the landown­er at an appro­pri­ate time.

4.6 Com­mu­nic­a­tions at a wild­fire An effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tem at a wild­fire is essen­tial to ensure safety and effect­ive use of resources. Com­mu­nic­a­tion may be between SFRS and estate staff or between estate teams. There is also usu­ally a need for good com­mu­nic­a­tion between fire­fight­ers and a loc­a­tion at a safe dis­tance from the fire, for example an estate office.

4.7 Com­mu­nic­a­tion at the fire site Com­mu­nic­a­tions at a wild­fire can be fast paced and may involve numer­ous people. Com­mu­nic­a­tions are there­fore much bet­ter trans­mit­ted via hand­held radi­os than mobile phones. Large estates are likely to have a radio sys­tem which allows all staff to speak to each oth­er. How­ever, there is also a need for a com­mon radio fre­quency across groups Cairngorms Nation­al Park Paper 2 Annex 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 18 of 44 of estates. Most Deer Man­age­ment Groups will already share a com­mon fre­quency for tasks like deer counting.

There is no need for one com­mon radio fre­quency for all land­hold­ings across the Nation­al Park as this would poten­tially involve too much radio traffic. Where fires occur near the bound­ary between two dif­fer­ent com­mon radio fre­quen­cies, then one per­son should com­mu­nic­ate instruc­tions from the Incid­ent Com­mand­er through two dif­fer­ent radi­os which are set to the two com­mon fre­quen­cies. There can be a lot of radio traffic at a wild­fire and radio dis­cip­line is vital for effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tion. Only import­ant mes­sages should be trans­mit­ted, and these should be kept con­cise. There is a real need to min­im­ise radio chat dur­ing fire­fight­ing operations.

Recom­mend­a­tion: All estates should