Appendix 4 – Email correspondence with [redacted] and other farmers in the Nethy Bridge area

Appendix 4

Email cor­res­pond­ence with and oth­er farm­ers in the Nethy Bridge area

Email from Jonath­an Wil­let, sent on the 23 August 2023 To: Andy Ford; CC: Ali McK­night; ; John Kirk; Lewis Pâté

Dear All

Please let me know if you have any changes to make to the action points from the meeting.

The Action Points from the meet­ing were;

AP. Andy to take for­ward the cre­ation of a farmer’s group meet­ing every 6 months to advise the Park Author­ity on what topics/​issues they would like to see the Park help­ing them with. AP. Jonath­an to work with farm­ers in the Park to arrange vis­its to see the beavers at South Clunes Farm. October/​Novem­ber time. AP. Jonath­an to provide a sum­mary of the NatureScot Mit­ig­a­tion Pro­tocol on the Park Author­ity web­site. This week AP. Jonath­an to invest­ig­ate the cre­ation of a Land Man­age­ment Group look­ing at beaver’s activ­ity, the mit­ig­a­tion required/​delivered and the effect­ive­ness of this. Feed­ing back its find­ings to the rel­ev­ant organ­isa­tions as required. By the end of the year. AP. Jonath­an to con­tact NatureScot to con­firm the fund­ing that would be avail­able if a flood embank­ment was dam­aged by beaver burrowing.

views were that needed more time to con­sider the pro­pos­al, wanted more inform­a­tion and also wanted a writ­ten agree­ment on what mit­ig­a­tion, where it would be delivered where and who would pay for it.

Some webpages; Park Author­ity Beaver page (includ­ing the sur­vey and FAQs) https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​c​a​r​i​n​g​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​/​c​a​i​r​n​g​o​r​m​s​-​n​a​t​u​r​e​/​p​r​i​o​r​i​t​y​-​s​p​e​c​i​e​s​/​b​e​aver/

Sum­mary of the NatureScot Beaver Mit­ig­a­tion Scheme. https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/protected-areas-and-species/protected-species/protected-species-z-guide/beaver/beaver-mitigation-scheme

NatureScot’s links to vari­ous aspects of mit­ig­a­tion. https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/protected-areas-and-species/protected-species/protected-species-z-guide/beaver/management-framework-beavers-scotland

Guid­ance — Man­aging the impacts of beavers in Scot­land (what you can and can’t do without a licence https://www.nature.scot/doc/guidance-managing-impacts-beavers-scotland Best wishes

Jonath­an

Email from sent on the 24 August 2023 To: Jonath­an Wil­let; Andy Ford; Nature@Cairngorms CC: Ali McK­night; ; John Kirk; Lewis Pâté

Jonath­an,

Thank-you for the note regard­ing our meet­ing yes­ter­day. Also thank-you to you and Andy for giv­ing your time for the meeting.

We man­aged to cov­er the points on the agenda but some in not great detail and I do have some sup­ple­ment­ary quer­ies and com­ments which I will forward.

It should be noted that Andy did con­firm that the CNPA did have the man­power and fin­an­cial resources to man­age this pro­ject without it affect­ing the many oth­er nature pro­jects already sup­por­ted by the park.

Thank-you for for­ward­ing the mit­ig­a­tion scheme, which I have briefly reviewed and I will revert with comments.

I will con­firm my view that the times­cale you have set yourselves is unreal­ist­ic con­sid­er­ing the form­al engage­ment pro­cess only com­menced on the 14^th August if you want the farm­ing com­munity to feel con­fid­ent with this rein­tro­duc­tion. It would only be fair to have the solu­tions out­lined in your email below includ­ing an agreed writ­ten mit­ig­a­tion scheme in place pri­or to the release of the first lot of beavers. I accept this may upset your planned times­cale. How­ever over the life of the beaver rein­tro­duc­tion pro­ject in the Cairngorms, on the pre­sump­tion you would want it to be con­sidered suc­cess­ful with an import­ant com­munity, who are respons­ible for deliv­er­ing many oth­er nature pro­jects, a delay whilst these issues are resolved would be judi­cious. Best wishes