Appendix 7 – Our approach to communications

Appendix 7

Bring­ing back beavers to the Cairngorms: our approach to communications

Jonath­an Wil­let, Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager, 19 Octo­ber 2023

Out­line the plan for com­mu­nic­at­ing the pro­cess and out­comes of the trans­lo­ca­tion (includ­ing steps to inform future trans­lo­ca­tions, stake­hold­er com­mu­nic­a­tion and pub­lic engagement)

The ini­tial com­mu­nic­a­tions for bring­ing beavers back to the Cairngorms began in June 2022. This took the form of a press release, announ­cing that the Park Author­ity board had agreed that we should take a lead­er­ship role in devel­op­ing an applic­a­tion to bring beavers back to the Cairngorms. The board meet­ing was livestreamed and minutes were pub­lished on our web­site shortly afterwards.

This gained momentum with the appoint­ment of the beaver pro­ject man­ager and a series of inform­al ​‘Beaver Bleth­ers’ drop-in events in March 2023, before mov­ing onto pro­mo­tion of the form­al engage­ment and its in-per­son events and accom­pa­ny­ing online sur­vey. The form­al engage­ment com­mu­nic­a­tions were centred around social media and web­site pro­mo­tion, includ­ing the release of a series of pre-recor­ded videos fea­tur­ing key stake­hold­ers and experts involved in the pro­ject. The videos were viewed over 30,000 times in total. They were sup­por­ted by fur­ther digit­al and off­line pro­mo­tion includ­ing posters, loc­al and nation­al press, web­site con­tent, dir­ect emails, leaf­lets, part­ner sup­port, art­icles in our res­id­ent magazine Cairn and much more (see the full engage­ment report in appendix 8 for full details).

In terms of loc­al press activ­ity, the Badenoch and Strath­spey Her­ald is a key weekly print title in the area and has sub­stan­tial reach loc­ally, with a cir­cu­la­tion of 2,296 and read­er­ship of 5,344. Good rela­tion­ships were built with a key journ­al­ist, res­ult­ing in eight art­icles about beavers, trans­lo­ca­tion plans and the engage­ment activ­it­ies from June to Septem­ber 2023. Oth­er print titles such as the Press and Journ­al were also inter­ested in

the story, and the BBC and STV have covered the story as part of their news bul­let­ins and are very keen to cov­er the release of beavers in future.

The five-hour inform­al and form­al engage­ment events that have been run so far (a total of 11, with nearly 200 attendees) have been very suc­cess­ful in enga­ging and inform­ing those attend­ing, and have also cre­ated strong lines of com­mu­nic­a­tions and pro­duct­ive work­ing rela­tion­ships between NatureScot, Nation­al Farm­ers Uni­on, Scot­land, Spey Fish­ery Board, The Beaver Trust and the Park Author­ity. Though these organ­isa­tions don’t agree on everything, they have shown they can work togeth­er very effect­ively and this inform­al com­mu­nic­a­tion has been a real strength.

The com­mu­nic­a­tion plan post-licence applic­a­tion will build on the com­mu­nic­a­tions path­ways used thus far to keep res­id­ents, vis­it­ors, land man­agers and oth­er key stake­hold­ers informed. It will use mul­tiple chan­nels, plat­forms and media to ensure that every­one has the chance to hear about key decisions and how the pro­ject pro­pos­al is pro­gress­ing. In addi­tion, the pro­ject will con­tin­ue to have a pres­ence at pub­lic events and will pri­or­it­ise face-to-face engage­ment, some­thing that has proved to be very pop­u­lar so far.

The devel­op­ment of an ongo­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion plan has con­sidered three dis­crete phases: the pre-decision phase of the licence applic­a­tion, the decision on the licence and the next steps fol­low­ing that decision. The first two phases will be rel­at­ively light touch, with a lim­ited num­ber of online resources being shared and no face-to-face events planned (to avoid ​‘con­sulta­tion fatigue’).

Depend­ing on the decision on the licence, the options are to regroup, recon­sider and reapply or take for­ward the release.

If suc­cess­ful in gain­ing a licence, the plan will again be split into three phases: the release itself, imme­di­ate post-release ter­rit­ori­al estab­lish­ment and ongo­ing ​‘liv­ing with beavers’ com­mu­nic­a­tion. Again, the first two will be time-lim­ited out of neces­sity, but the third will be an ongo­ing nar­rat­ive about the beavers them­selves but also their inter­ac­tion with the biod­iversity around them (includ­ing humans) and how they modi­fy their hab­it­at. This will include high­light­ing the man­age­ment tech­niques used e.g. flow devices, tree pro­tec­tion and fen­cing, to avoid or mit­ig­ate any poten­tially unac­cept­able impacts to impacts whose levels are acceptable.

Of the two ini­tial release sites, one will be pro­moted pub­licly – Rothiemurchus. This will allow mem­bers of the pub­lic want­ing to watch beavers to be dir­ec­ted to an appro­pri­ate, staffed loc­a­tion where their ques­tions can be answered and any poten­tial impacts care­fully man­aged. We would anti­cip­ate this engage­ment to be rel­at­ively sub­stan­tial giv­en the nature of the spe­cies and the loc­a­tion in ques­tion, provid­ing a pos­it­ive oppor­tun­ity for high-qual­ity engage­ment both with vis­it­ors and res­id­ents with­in the Nation­al Park. We are work­ing with Rothiemurchus to way­mark a beaver trail loop with facil­it­ies and park­ing at each end, as well as installing tem­por­ary inter­pret­a­tion by the time of release and per­man­ent inter­pret­a­tion by the end of the winter. This will go hand-in-hand with respons­ible access mes­saging and advice on min­im­ising wild­life dis­turb­ance. There will be an all-abil­it­ies sec­tion of path and new seat­ing close to the water’s edge, an upgrade to exist­ing infrastructure.

Beaver hab­it­at modi­fic­a­tion and how it impacts (or doesn’t impact) humans will be a key part of the com­mu­nic­a­tion going for­ward. We are very keen to high­light any mit­ig­a­tions being util­ised and report on how suc­cess­ful or oth­er­wise — they are. The first dam on an Atlantic sal­mon spawn­ing burn will of course be of great interest, and we will be high­light­ing our mon­it­or­ing and research efforts with part­ners as this pro­gresses, e.g. beaver impacts on rare lichens on ripari­an trees. These updates, plus news from our reg­u­lar site vis­its, will be com­mu­nic­ated monthly via the beaver pro­ject man­ager, oth­er pro­ject staff and part­ners, and will over time broaden to include oth­er stake­hold­ers and their beaver stories.

Anoth­er key strand of the com­mu­nic­a­tions that will begin before the release of beavers is how we should behave around beaver ter­rit­or­ies to ensure that we do not dis­turb them. This should also give all those who want to watch beavers the best oppor­tun­ity to see them safely. This will be done in part­ner­ship with the landown­er of the release site and their staff, the Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice and NatureScot. We and our part­ners will use all the chan­nels men­tioned above and also a reg­u­lar on the ground pres­ence to engage with the pub­lic, answer ques­tions and demon­strate good beha­viour around beavers.

Along­side this, we will con­tin­ue to devel­op rela­tion­ships with landown­ers and man­agers sur­round­ing the release sites (and any new ter­rit­or­ies that are cre­ated); we will keep loc­al com­munit­ies – includ­ing com­munity coun­cils – informed dir­ectly through updates to their meet­ings and offers of present­a­tions. An annu­al beaver report will be pro­duced, giv­ing an insight into how the beavers have settled in, what they have been up to and what mit­ig­a­tion, if any, has been required.

In par­al­lel with the release on the Spey, the Park Author­ity will start inform­al con­ver­sa­tions about beavers in four oth­er catch­ments with­in the Nation­al Park, piggy­back­ing on exist­ing Park Author­ity engage­ment events already in the diary. A clear plan for the four catch­ments will be agreed intern­ally and a timeline iden­ti­fied in the new year.

One learn­ing from the cur­rent form­al engage­ment pro­cess was that the farm­ing com­munity in par­tic­u­lar wanted more time to con­sider the release of beavers and felt the pro­cess had been rushed. In response to this, we will pub­li­cise a timetable for action pri­or to any form­al work on fur­ther beaver trans­lo­ca­tion proposals.

Anoth­er request was that we run an engage­ment event down­stream of the Nation­al Park bound­ary on the Spey catch­ment, and we took this for­ward with the help of the Spey Fish­ery Board organ­ising an event in Aber­lour as part of the form­al con­sulta­tion. Two events in Fochabers have also been organ­ised in mid-Novem­ber, one for farm­ers and anoth­er for gen­er­al interest, to allow us to hear peoples’ thoughts and opin­ions and answer any ques­tions people may have about beavers and what they do. Also in mid-Novem­ber, we are organ­ising two farm­ers’ vis­its to South Clunes Farm, a 100-acre land­hold­ing where cap­tive beavers have been res­id­ent since 2008. This will give farm­ers the oppor­tun­ity to see what beaver do and speak to a farm­er who activ­ity sought out beavers for his land.

Out­with the Nation­al Park, we will be pro­mot­ing our desire to share our exper­i­ences and learn­ings with any­one look­ing at future beaver trans­lo­ca­tions. We have already done this with the Corn­wall Wild­life Trust and the Ettrick Val­ley Pro­ject, who atten­ded our Nethy Bridge and Aber­lour form­al engage­ment events.