250214Paper2IntegratedWildFireMngmtPlanCover

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 2 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025

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For decision Title: Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Management

Stra­tegic context

1. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan sec­tion A7. Fire Man­age­ment con­tains an action to devel­op an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP) by 2027.

Back­ground

1. In a report by the James Hut­ton Insti­tute (2024) cli­mate change obser­va­tions and pre­dic­tions for the Nation­al Park all demon­strate a pat­tern of con­tinu­ing wet­ter win­ters and drier sum­mers. All areas of the Park are pro­jec­ted to exper­i­ence increases in mean monthly max­im­um and min­im­um tem­per­at­ure, large sec­tions of the Park will become drier between April through to Septem­ber, and there will be a sub­stan­tial increase in the num­ber of dry days and of con­sec­ut­ive dry days. This will increase the risk of drier soils and veget­a­tion, with con­sequences on eco­lo­gic­al func­tions and fire danger.
2. Fuel loads vary across the Nation­al Park accord­ing to land man­age­ment object­ives. Nation­al policy and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan object­ives to reduce herb­i­vore pres­sure, increase struc­tur­al and spe­cies diversity on moor­lands and expand wood­land, par­tic­u­larly through nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion, whilst bring­ing mul­tiple bene­fits and ulti­mately cre­at­ing more resi­li­ent land­scapes, will increase fuel loads in the inter­ven­ing period.
3. The Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan aims to provide sup­port and guid­ance to all land man­agers in devel­op­ing robust approaches to redu­cing the risk of igni­tion, improv­ing the effic­acy of wild­fire fight­ing, and build­ing resi­li­ence into the land­scape in the con­text of dif­fer­ent land man­age­ment object­ives across the Park.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 2 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025

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Pur­pose

1. This Board Paper presents a draft Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan to go out for a form­al con­sulta­tion peri­od of six weeks dur­ing Feb­ru­ary and March 2025.

Recom­mend­a­tion

1. The Board is asked to: a) Approve the draft Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan for consultation.

Stake­hold­ers

1. The draft for con­sulta­tion has been pre­pared with input and advice from the Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group, the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice, Deer Man­age­ment Groups, the Land Man­agers’ For­um, Cairngorms Con­nect, East Cairngorms Moor­land Part­ner­ship and indi­vidu­al landown­ers in the Nation­al Park.

Implic­a­tions

1. Resource alloc­a­tions to deliv­er wild­fire and respons­ible beha­viour sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions are included in the draft oper­a­tion­al plan budget for approv­al by Board in March 2025. There is suf­fi­cient staff resource alloc­ated in the draft oper­a­tion­al plan to sup­port patrolling and com­mu­nic­a­tions by the Park Author­ity ranger service.

2. The imple­ment­a­tion of the plan will be mon­itored by the Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group with updates to the Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee on an annu­al basis.

Colin McCle­an colinmacclean@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 20 Janu­ary 2025