Appendix 8 – Engagement report

Cov­er image © Laurie Campbell

Bring­ing beavers back to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

Engage­ment report 20 Octo­ber 2023

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 1 of 45

Con­tents

Sum­mary of form­al engage­ment activity……………………………………………………………..2

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………3

Inform­al engagement……………………………………………………………………………………….4

Form­al engagement……………………………………………………………………………………….12

Oth­er engagement………………………………………………………………………………………….15

Spe­cies-spe­cif­ic engagement………………………………………………………………………….20

Organ­isa­tion­al group responses…………………………………………………………………….22

Engage­ment survey……………………………………………………………………………………….23

Ana­lys­is of results…………………………………………………………………………………………..33

Equal­it­ies and demographics……………………………………………………………………………39

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………….44

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 2 of 45

Sum­mary of form­al engage­ment activ­ity 14 August to 25 Septem­ber 2023

42 days of form­al engagement

515 online sur­vey respondents

393 com­ments received, online or at events

104 attendees at events

84,833 people reached on social media

2,537 likes, reacts and shares

33,688 video views

18 site vis­its with landown­ers and managers

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 3 of 45

Intro­duc­tion Back­ground to bring­ing beavers back to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is work­ing closely with a range of part­ners and land man­agers on a care­fully con­sidered pro­pos­al to rein­tro­duce beavers to the upper Spey catch­ment to estab­lish a founder pop­u­la­tion to cre­ate a self-sus­tain­ing pop­u­la­tion of beavers in the Spey catchment.

Through the Cairngorms Beaver Group, the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has been work­ing with key stake­hold­ers to take this pro­pos­al for­ward. The group was estab­lished in 2017 to advise and plan for the arrival of beavers to the Nation­al Park. It includes rep­res­ent­at­ives from a wide range of back­grounds and sec­tors, includ­ing land man­age­ment, con­ser­va­tion bod­ies, fish­er­ies and farm­ers. Mem­bers include the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, Nation­al Farm­ers Uni­on of Scot­land, Scot­tish Land and Estates, Spey Fish­ery Board, Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive, Dee Catch­ment Part­ner­ship, River Dee Trust, Forest and Land Scot­land, RSPB Scot­land and NatureScot.

Over the last 12 months the Park Author­ity has been listen­ing and learn­ing about the oppor­tun­it­ies and issues beavers can cre­ate. Speak­ing to land man­agers and farm­ers liv­ing along­side beavers, and those who have gone through the pro­cess of trans­lo­cat­ing beavers. The Park Author­ity has been under­tak­ing sites vis­its in the upper Spey catch­ment, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with private landown­ers, busi­nesses, com­munity interests and have had extens­ive engage­ment with poten­tial release site own­ers. As part of ongo­ing farm vis­its our Farm Con­ser­va­tion Advisor has also been speak­ing with farm­ers in Badenoch and Strath­spey about beavers.

Over­view of the engage­ment As part of the pro­pos­al to return beavers to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, the Park Author­ity wanted to hear the thoughts and opin­ions from as broad a cross-sec­tion of our com­munit­ies as pos­sible. This includes people work­ing on or man­aging the land, people access­ing our rivers and lochs for recre­ation, people liv­ing and work­ing in our towns and vil­lages, people own­ing or work­ing for loc­al busi­nesses, and much more. The Park Author­ity has not only engaged with people liv­ing or work­ing in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of poten­tial release sites, but through­out the Spey catch­ment and beyond.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 4 of 45

The Park Author­ity has used a vari­ety of formats from online and prin­ted mater­i­als, drop-in events held in loc­a­tions through­out the Spey catch­ment, vis­its with land man­agers to an area with beavers, site vis­its to hear con­cerns on the ground and talks to loc­al interest groups.

This report provides a sum­mary of our engage­ment activ­it­ies and presents those views both in sup­port of bring­ing back beavers but also those that have con­cerns and / or don’t sup­port the proposal.

Inform­al engage­ment The Park Author­ity under­took a peri­od of inform­al engage­ment which had four main aims:

• To test our engage­ment strategy methods.
• To out­line our pro­pos­als to return beaver to the Nation­al Park and engage people in the process.
• To gauge the level of under­stand­ing about beavers.
• To gain more under­stand­ing about the oppor­tun­it­ies but also the con­cerns people might have.

The Park Author­ity ran four drop-in events — or ​‘beaver bleth­ers’ – which were atten­ded by 80 people in total. All were open to every­one, but one was aimed spe­cific­ally at land man­agers. Rep­res­ent­at­ives from the Park Author­ity, NatureScot loc­al area staff and mit­ig­a­tion team, Nation­al Farm­ers’ Uni­on Scot­land, The Beaver Trust and Argaty Red Kites Centre were present. These events aimed to provide inform­a­tion in an inform­al and open way and were held in Kin­craig, Aviemore and Kin­gussie. These loc­a­tions were chosen as areas where the most suit­able beaver hab­it­at was iden­ti­fied and so poten­tial release areas.

• Wed­nes­day 1 March 2023 – Com­munity Hall, Kincraig.
• Thursday 9 March 2023 – Duke of Gor­don Hotel, Kingussie.
• Thursday 16 March 2023 – Com­munity Hall, Kincraig.
• Wed­nes­day 22 March 2023 – Aviemore Youth Hostel, Aviemore.

The learn­ings from these early events informed the form­al engage­ment pro­cess, which com­menced in sum­mer 2023. A report on this engage­ment pro­cess is avail­able in appendix 9.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 5 of 45

Web­site The beaver pro­ject page on the Park Author­ity web­site went live on Thursday 16 Feb­ru­ary 2023 and served as a hub for all inform­a­tion relat­ing to the pro­ject. Updated reg­u­larly, the web­site con­tains an over­view of the pro­posed plans, the his­tory behind the pro­ject, links to pub­lic­a­tions and reports, fre­quently asked ques­tions, inform­a­tion about beavers, inform­a­tion about the beaver mit­ig­a­tion scheme and con­tact details should people want to get in touch.

Image 1 — Screen­shot of beaver web­site, which served as a hub for all inform­a­tion relat­ing to the project.

All engage­ment dir­ec­ted people to the web­site page and, dur­ing the form­al engage­ment peri­od, a link to the stake­hold­er sur­vey was hos­ted here. People were encour­aged to read more about the pro­ject before filling out the sur­vey and asked if they had done so in the sur­vey itself. For any­one who arrived at the Sur­vey­Mon­key webpage without hav­ing vis­ited the pro­ject page first, there was a link in the sur­vey intro­duc­tion and a sec­tion encour­aging people to read more first, to ensure that people were as informed as pos­sible in advance of com­plet­ing the survey.

Google Ana­lyt­ics has col­lec­ted inform­a­tion from 3 March 2023. All val­ues are lower than real­ity as only users who accept cook­ies are recor­ded, but can be used as an indication

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 6 of 45

of trends, demon­strat­ing that traffic increased sig­ni­fic­antly with pro­mo­tion relat­ing to the engage­ment period.

Image 2 — Table and graph show­ing num­ber of web­site page views and data between 3 March 2023 — 16 Octo­ber 2023

How the engage­ment was pro­moted The engage­ment peri­od was pro­moted across a range of media and out­lets to ensure as many people as pos­sible were aware and able to par­ti­cip­ate. This included social media, posters, loc­al and nation­al press, web­site high­lights, dir­ect emails, leaf­lets, part­ner sup­port, our res­id­ents’ magazine Cairn and more.

To ensure that the engage­ment was pro­moted off­line as well as digit­ally, posters, leaf­lets, loc­al press and art­icles in the Nation­al Park’s res­id­ents’ magazine were all taken for­ward dur­ing the engage­ment period.

All pro­mo­tion, digit­al and off­line, was cre­ated to spe­cif­ic access­ib­il­ity stand­ards through imple­ment­ing meas­ures such as cap­tions on videos, alt-text on images, and print size and con­trast in prin­ted media.

Social media To sup­port the com­mu­nic­a­tion of the project’s pro­gress and the form­al engage­ment, a coordin­ated social media plan was developed. Util­ising Face­book, Twit­ter, Linked­In and Ins­tagram, this included a suite of videos fea­tur­ing a range of per­spect­ives from key part­ners and experts, reg­u­lar updates and prompts to get involved. This proved hugely suc­cess­ful at enga­ging with people, and the videos in par­tic­u­lar reached thou­sands of 40 34

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 7 of 45

people, over 33,000 views in total. Part of this suc­cess was down to the act­ive approach taken towards com­munity man­age­ment, where com­ments were flagged by the team, responses coordin­ated and then pos­ted quickly.

Table 1 — Show­ing engage­ment data for social media posts across both Cairngorms Nation­al Park and Cairngorms Nature channels.

	Inform­al engage­ment	Form­al engagement
Posts	47	64
Impres­sions (the num­ber of times our con­tent was seen, includ­ing mul­tiple views from indi­vidu­al users)	159,550	155,024
Reach (the num­ber of unique people who saw our content)	70,944	84,833
Engage­ments (the num­ber of times that people engaged with our con­tent through reac­tions, com­ments, shares and clicks etc)	6,201	6,310
Video views	5,971	33,688
Likes / reactions	2,056	2,252
Shares	286	285
Com­ments	47	46
Link clicks (cairngorms​.co​.uk/​b​e​avers)	987	770

Posters and leaf­lets Posters out­lining the event details were put up across the region, from Dal­whin­nie through Lag­gan and New­ton­more into Aviemore, Boat of Garten, Car­rbridge, Dul­nain Bridge, Crom­dale and as far as Tomin­toul and Glenlivet.

Leaf­lets were also prin­ted and dis­trib­uted to loc­al out­lets to sup­port the engage­ment, out­lining the key ele­ments of the pro­ject, fre­quently asked ques­tions and how to con­tact us for more inform­a­tion or if people had con­cerns. You can see one side of the first edi­tion leaf­let design below.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 8 of 45

Image 3 — Image show­ing beaver leaf­let pro­duced to sup­port engage­ment activities.

Press releases A series of press releases were issued to ensure the press were informed of the pro­ject and pro­cess. These received a good amount of atten­tion, res­ult­ing in a tele­vi­sion inter­view as well as cov­er­age in print both loc­ally and nationally.

• 16 Feb­ru­ary 2023 – Park Talk: Bring­ing back beavers – CEO’s column on pro­ject rationale and announ­cing inform­al engage­ment and beaver bleth­er dates.
• 17 Feb­ru­ary 2023 – Come for a bleth­er about beavers – pro­mot­ing pro­ject and inform­al engage­ment beaver bleth­er event and dates.
• 9 August 2023 – Bring­ing beavers back to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park — announ­cing form­al engage­ment events and poten­tial release sites.
• 18 Septem­ber 2023 – Final call for views on bring­ing back beavers – engage­ment clos­ing soon, dir­ect­ing people to web­site and survey.
• 27 Septem­ber 2023 – Next steps for beavers in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park — mark­ing the end of form­al engage­ment and head­line statistics.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 9 of 45

Press cov­er­age The pro­ject has received wide­spread interest across loc­al and nation­al news plat­forms, includ­ing an inter­view with STV News at the start of the form­al engage­ment which aired on 10 August 2023 on the 6pm news. This fea­tured our Head of Con­ser­va­tion encour­aging people to engage in the pro­cess and high­lighted the import­ance of hear­ing the thoughts and opin­ions of land man­agers, com­munit­ies and businesses.

The loc­al paper for Badenoch and Strath­spey is the Strath­spey Her­ald which has sub­stan­tial reach loc­ally, with a cir­cu­la­tion of 2,296 and read­er­ship of 5,344. This paper played a help­ful role in com­mu­nic­at­ing the engage­ment to loc­al res­id­ents. Key art­icles included:

• 25 Novem­ber 2023 – Move to return beavers to Badenoch and Strath­spey con­tin­ues – Board announce­ment of our lead­er­ship on the project.
• 20 Feb­ru­ary 2023 – Beavers near­ing return to Cairngorms after absence of 400 years – intro­du­cing the pro­ject and details of inform­al blethers.
• 10 July 2023 – Plans mov­ing for­ward for rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers — inform­al engage­ment ended.
• 10 August 2023 – Next steps could see beavers return by this autumn — sites named and details of blethers.
• 17 August 2023 – Kin­craig is beaver­ing away – first engage­ment event launched.
• 25 August 2023 – Badenoch and Strath­spey beaver­ing away for return of lost spe­cies – cov­er­age of first engage­ment event and pro­mot­ing the rest.
• 22 Septem­ber 2023 – Log your thoughts on rein­tro­duc­tion of beavers in Badenoch and Strath­spey – last call for engage­ment in survey.
• 28 Septem­ber 2023 – Lost spe­cies takes step near­er to return to wild in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park — form­al engage­ment ended and sum­mary of key findings.

Cairn res­id­ents’ magazine Cairn is a magazine for the res­id­ents of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park pro­duced by the Park Author­ity. It is dis­trib­uted three times a year and goes out to all 11,702 house­holds with­in the Nation­al Park bound­ary. The beaver pro­ject was covered in a full-page fea­ture in the March edi­tion (delivered from 27 March 2023), which intro­duced the pro­ject, covered the inform­al beaver bleth­ers and explained the upcom­ing form­al engage­ment pro­cess. It also included an inter­view with Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer of The

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 10 of 45

Beaver Trust on rein­tro­du­cing beavers and her exper­i­ences with the Scot­tish Beaver Trial.

Image 4 – Show­ing full page story in spring 2023 edi­tion of Cairn magazine intro­du­cing the project.

The July edi­tion of Cairn, which landed from 31 July 2023, announced the form­al engage­ment was to be start­ing in August.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 11 of 45

Image 5 — Show­ing short story in sum­mer 2023 edi­tion of Cairn magazine announ­cing the start of the form­al engage­ment process.

The winter edi­tion of Cairn sum­mar­ised the form­al engage­ment peri­od, and described the next steps of the project.

Image 6 — Show­ing half page story in winter 2023 edi­tion of Cairn magazine announ­cing the immin­ent licence sub­mis­sion to NatureScot.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 12 of 45

Form­al engage­ment Engage­ment events Just before the launch of the form­al engage­ment, the Grant­own Agri­cul­tur­al Show was atten­ded on 10 August 2023. This was a dry run for the six form­al engage­ment events. The stand was shared with oth­er staff from the Park Author­ity and a couple of part­ners. Over the course of the event, the Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager and Farm Con­ser­va­tion Advisor had 20 dir­ect inter­ac­tions and dis­cus­sions about beavers with farm­ers and mem­bers of the public.

Six drop-in engage­ment events were under­taken dur­ing the form­al engage­ment pro­cess. In order to ensure that key stake­hold­er groups were covered, some events were tailored to a spe­cif­ic audi­ence, while still being open to the gen­er­al pub­lic. The excep­tion was the event at the Tipi in Inver­druie on 7 Septem­ber 2023, which was coordin­ated by the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and spe­cific­ally tar­geted busi­ness own­ers with­in Badenoch and Strath­spey. Busi­nesses were com­mu­nic­ated with about the pro­pos­als and the oppor­tun­ity to engage through the pro­mo­tion of this event, wheth­er or not they were able to attend.

Table 2 — Show­ing attend­ance num­bers at each form­al engage­ment events.

Date	Loc­a­tion	Focus audi­ence	Attend­ance
17 August	Kin­craig Com­munity Hall		15
23 August	Nethy­bridge Hotel	Fish­er­ies	6
30 August	Duke of Gor­don Hotel, Kingussie	Land man­agers and farmers	25
7 Septem­ber	The Tipi, Inverdruie	Busi­nesses	7
13 Septem­ber	Grant Arms Hotel, Grant­own on Spey		22
19 Septem­ber	Aber­lour Hotel		29

Rep­res­ent­at­ives from the Park Author­ity includ­ing con­ser­va­tion, land man­age­ment and ranger staff, NatureScot loc­al oper­a­tions officers and mit­ig­a­tion team, The Beaver Trust and Nation­al Farm­ers’ Uni­on Scot­land were present at all events. Rep­res­ent­at­ives from RSPB Scot­land, Argaty Red Kites Centre and Argyll Wild­life Centre joined for select events. Mem­bers of the Park Author­ity board, includ­ing John Kirk, joined the events at Kin­gussie, Nethy Bridge and Grant­own on Spey. Sandy Brem­ner (Con­vener) and Grant

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 13 of 45

Moir (CEO) were both present at the Nethy Bridge event. Andy Ford (Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change) atten­ded the Aber­lour and Nethy Bridge events.

Image 4 — Show­ing Dr Roisin Camp­bell-Palmer of The Beaver Trust speak­ing to attendees at the Grant­own on Spey engage­ment event.

Sim­il­ar to the beaver bleth­ers, the form­al engage­ment events involved sub­stant­ive dis­cus­sions and high-qual­ity engage­ment, with attendees stay­ing for half an hour and some­times much longer. Hav­ing mul­tiple experts avail­able allowed dif­fer­ent view­points and opin­ions to be shared. The wel­com­ing nature of the events with tea, cof­fee and bis­cuits avail­able and a mem­ber of staff to greet those attend­ing helped put people at ease and cre­ate an atmo­sphere that facil­it­ated high-qual­ity dis­cus­sions. The fact that staff were there to hear people’s thoughts and opin­ions rather than simply give out inform­a­tion was wel­comed by those attending.

Not every­one attend­ing was in favour of the pro­pos­al; how­ever, in spite of this the tone of the dis­cus­sions was robust but respect­ful through­out. All except a tiny minor­ity of the attendees were polite and respect­ful in their inter­ac­tions with staff.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 14 of 45

There was a vari­ety of mater­i­als avail­able to read or inter­act with, includ­ing dis­play boards, beaver exhib­its (pelts, skulls, chewed sticks, beaver-chewed wood chips etc) and videos, provid­ing a vari­ety of media to allow people to engage in a way that suited them. The large beaver dam capa­city and beaver hab­it­at index maps proved to be an excel­lent engage­ment tool that acted as a spring­board for fur­ther dis­cus­sions about how and where beavers would spread with­in the catch­ment, or to high­light issues that may occur due to dam­ming. As a res­ult of these dis­cus­sions, fur­ther site vis­its have been planned to dis­cuss these issues in situ.

Image 5 — Show­ing map identi­fy­ing beaver dam capa­city, dis­play and inter­pret­ive mater­i­als includ­ing ​‘Bry­ony’ the beaver kit at the Grant­own Show.

People’s opin­ions on the pro­ject were gathered at these events through paper forms, allow­ing those who were unable to use the digit­al sur­vey to give their thoughts. These responses were col­lated and sum­mar­ised into table 3 below and detailed in appendix

1. It is import­ant to note that some of these people com­men­ted they may also fill out

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 15 of 45

the online sur­vey, so a num­ber of responses lis­ted below could be duplic­ated with those in the online sur­vey res­ults. Some attendees chose not to record their attend­ance by com­plet­ing a form and will not be coun­ted below.

Table 3 — Show­ing people’s opin­ions on the pro­ject by com­plet­ing paper forms at events and who may have been unable to com­plete the digit­al survey.

Very pos­it­ive	38
No con­cerns	11
Some con­cerns	11
Against	1
No com­ment	31
School group	12
Total attendees	104

Oth­er engage­ment Arising from dis­cus­sions at the form­al engage­ment events them­selves or from pub­li­city around them, one meet­ing in Grant­own on Spey and three site vis­its were arranged with farm­ing and / or croft­ing groups in Nethy Bridge, Kin­gussie and Laggan.

A list of ques­tions was sent to the Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager after the meet­ing in Grant­own on Spey from of These were answered in a form­al response (see appen­dices 4 and 5) and anoth­er set of fol­low up ques­tions was sent through which are in the pro­cess of being answered at the time of writing.

Nethy Bridge farm­ers Fol­low­ing con­cerns raised with the Park Authority’s Farm Con­ser­va­tion Advisor by the farm­ing com­munity in Nethy Bridge, a meet­ing was held on 23 Septem­ber 2023 at the Grant Arms Hotel, Grant­own on Spey, to dis­cuss poten­tial issues around beaver impacts, the mit­ig­a­tion scheme and the Park Authority’s plans to bring beavers back to the Cairngorms. This meet­ing was atten­ded by four farm­ers and two Park Author­ity staff mem­bers (the Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager and Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change), John Kirk (farm­er and Park Author­ity board mem­ber) and Ali McK­night (of AgroE­co­logy, an inde­pend­ent loc­al agri­cul­tur­al advisor). The action points from this meet­ing can be found in appendix 4. Fur­ther ques­tions were sent to the Park Author­ity by and the answers to these can be found in appendix 5.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 16 of 45

Fol­low­ing on from this meet­ing, a site vis­it took place on 27 Septem­ber 2023 at with five loc­al farm­ers. Rep­res­ent­at­ives from NatureScot, The Beaver Trust, Ali McK­night, Park Author­ity board mem­ber and loc­al farm­er John Kirk, Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager, Head of Con­ser­va­tion and Farm Con­ser­va­tion Advisor also atten­ded. The meet­ing was arranged to see the land in situ and dis­cuss flood banks and poten­tial neg­at­ive beaver impacts on pro­duct­ive agri­cul­tur­al land. Fol­low­ing the meet­ing the Park Author­ity agreed to map the prox­im­ity of the flood banks to the Spey in this area and lower Dul­nain along­side suit­able beaver hab­it­at, identi­fy­ing areas of high risk, and to com­mis­sion a sur­vey of the cur­rent con­di­tion of the flood bank. Please note: this has been delayed due to unpre­ced­en­ted flood­ing over the week­end 7 and 8 Octo­ber 2023 and anti­cip­ated flood­ing due to storm Babet, this will be taken for­ward when flood water recedes and con­di­tions are safe. A note of the meet­ing is also provided in appendix 6.

Kin­gussie farm­ers / crofters Fol­low­ing social media inter­ac­tion and sub­sequent email cor­res­pond­ence with a con­cerned loc­al crofter in Kin­gussie, they atten­ded the form­al engage­ment event at Kin­gussie, stay­ing for a num­ber of hours and hav­ing sub­stant­ive dis­cus­sions with rep­res­ent­at­ives from mul­tiple organ­isa­tions. This led to a request for a group site vis­it to look at the low-lying areas of Kin­gussie. A site vis­it took place on 14 Septem­ber, five farm­ers / crofters along with the Park Authority’s Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager and Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change, RSPB Scot­land and Ali McK­night. There was much dis­cus­sions of risk to the ​‘main drain’ being dammed and iden­ti­fied high risk areas where impacts would be accept­able and unac­cept­able and dis­cuss­ing poten­tial mon­it­or­ing and mit­ig­a­tion. It appeared a con­sensus on the approach to take should beavers col­on­ise the area had been reached by the end of the meet­ing. There was no note taken of this inform­al and rather dis­curs­ive meet­ing. An email sent on behalf of the crofters attend­ing the meet­ing was received on 17 Octo­ber 2023, over­turn­ing the views expressed at the site meet­ing and ask­ing for a beaver exclu­sion zone in the area. See appendix 6.1.

Lag­gan farm­ers / crofters Fol­low­ing attend­ance at the inform­al and form­al engage­ment events at Kin­craig and Kin­gussie, a meet­ing was arranged with farm­ers, crofters and landown­ers in the Lag­gan area at Lag­gan Vil­lage Hall on 12 Octo­ber 2023. Sev­en­teen mem­bers of the loc­al farm­ing and croft­ing com­munity atten­ded, along with the Park Authority’s Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager, Head of Con­ser­va­tion, Farm Con­ser­va­tion Advisor, Nation­al Farm­ers’ Uni­on Scot­land and Park Author­ity board mem­ber John Kirk. This was an oppor­tun­ity to

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 17 of 45

hear the con­cerns of land man­agers and res­id­ents in this area. Spe­cific­ally in rela­tion to flood bank and impacts on farm­ing (as above). A note of this meet­ing is provided in appendix 6.

Kin­gussie Shinty Club Coun­cil­lor and Park Author­ity board mem­ber Rus­sell Jones reques­ted a meet­ing at The Dell to dis­cuss the poten­tial beaver impacts on the riverb­ank. Andy Ford, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change, atten­ded a meet­ing held at The Dell on 20 September

1. A note of this meet­ing was not taken but the key agreed out­comes were:
2. Make sure the site is included in the ​‘hot­spot’ map­ping that picks up areas to keep a very close eye should beavers be pro­spect­ing in the area.
3. Work with the Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive to look at options for plant­ing and / or wil­low spil­ing and / or fen­cing to rein­force the bank and dis­cour­age bur­row­ing as a pre­cau­tion. There may be an oppor­tun­ity here to involve rangers and volunteers.

The response sent by the Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager on 21 Septem­ber 2023 to Andy Ford and Rus­sell Jones is as follows:

1. I can con­firm that the riverb­ank at The Dell will be a ​‘hot­spot’ area and will be mon­itored reg­u­larly for signs of beavers and if it seems that they are res­id­ent in the imme­di­ate area then mon­it­or­ing will be under­taken weekly. The upper part of the ​‘main drain’ which is nearby has ​‘hot­spot’ sim­il­ar status, as does the out­flow burn from the waste water treat­ment works.
2. I will speak to my line man­ager, who has been very involved with the Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive and we will invest­ig­ate options to rein­force the bank and how that could be delivered. Once we have some pos­sible options, I will let you know what they are.

(Note: A meet­ing with Spey Catch­ment Ini­ti­at­ive staff is being organ­ised in Novem­ber 2023).

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 18 of 45

Image 6 — Dr Rob Need­ham talk­ing about his research on brown trout and beavers with a group of stake­hold­ers at South Clunes 22 August 2023.

Land man­ager and fish­er­ies vis­it to a site with beavers The Park Author­ity organ­ised a vis­it on 22 August 2023 to South Clunes, a fam­ily-run, regen­er­at­ive live­stock farm that lies to the south of the Beauly Firth. The farm has had beavers with­in a 100-acre enclos­ure for over a dec­ade. Fif­teen atten­ded out of the 16 invited, with rep­res­ent­a­tion from, landown­ers, farm­ers and the fish­er­ies sec­tor. NatureScot beaver man­age­ment staff and Dr Rob Need­ham from The Beaver Trust also atten­ded. This vis­it gave attendees the oppor­tun­ity to see first-hand the effects of beavers on the land, ask the farm­ers dir­ectly about their exper­i­ence of liv­ing and farm­ing along­side beaver, and dis­cuss the research under­taken on beaver impacts on brown trout at the site.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 19 of 45

One-to-one site vis­its with landown­ers and man­agers Since com­ing into post in mid-March 2023, the Beaver Pro­ject Man­ager has under­taken 18 site vis­its to dis­cuss poten­tial beaver impacts with vari­ous landown­ers and organisations.

These site vis­its allowed a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of the very loc­al issue that may arise and also allowed dis­cus­sion of how best to deal with these, should they arise. The two key desired out­comes of these vis­its were to build a rela­tion­ship and trust between the site own­er and the Beaver Pro­ject Officer so that lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion would be open and read­ily used, and that a plan for pro­act­ive or react­ive mit­ig­a­tion was agreed on before there was any release of beavers. These site vis­its will be a key ongo­ing part of the mon­it­or­ing pro­gramme that is being final­ised by the Park Author­ity and NatureScot.

Table 4 — Show­ing dates for one-to-one site vis­its between the Beaver Pro­ject Officer and landown­ers and land managers.

Date	Loc­a­tion	Type of organisation
7 April	Loch Insh Watersports	Busi­nesses
11 April	River Spey	NGO
14 April	Coull Wood	Gov­ern­ment
28 April	RSPB Insh Marshes	NGO
24 May	Alvie and Dalraddy Estates	Busi­nesses
13 June	South Clunes	Busi­nesses
27 June	Alvie and Dalraddy Estates	Busi­nesses
12 July	East­er Duthil	Farm­ers
13 July	Anagach Woods	Char­ity
21 July	Rothiemoon	Farm­ers
4 August	Rothiemurchus	Busi­nesses
4 August	Alvie and Dalraddy Estates	Busi­nesses
15 August	Rothiemurchus	Landown­er
12 Septem­ber	Old Milton	Busi­nesses
14 Septem­ber	Kin­gussie	Farm­ers
27 Septem­ber	Bal­lie­furth	Farm­ers
28 Septem­ber	Old Milton	Busi­nesses
11 Octo­ber	Rothiemurchus	Busi­nesses

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 20 of 45

RSPB Scot­land engage­ment RSPB Scot­land staff at Insh Marshes nature reserve also engaged with loc­al landown­ers, land man­agers and communities.

A record of this engage­ment can be found in appendix 6.4

Spe­cies-spe­cif­ic engage­ment Aspen The Park Author­ity have had ongo­ing dia­logue with the Cairngorms Aspen Group through­out this pro­cess and have been work­ing with them to estab­lish the loc­a­tion of poten­tially vul­ner­able stands of aspen. There is over­lap in the mem­ber­ship of the Cairngorms Beaver Group and the Aspen Group, which has fur­ther ensured any con­cerns regard­ing aspen and its asso­ci­ated spe­cies are fully under­stood and taken into account.

The Park Author­ity has under­taken site vis­its with mem­bers of the group to look at import­ant aspen sites close to the pro­posed release sites and dis­cuss poten­tial mit­ig­a­tion and pro­act­ive con­ser­va­tion meas­ures to reduce beaver impacts. In addi­tion, devel­op­ment of a long-term spa­tial plan has begun to enhance the exist­ing aspen resource and devel­op an aspen net­work across the Nation­al Park. Aspen forms a key part of the mon­it­or­ing plan.

Lichens and bry­ophytes A meet­ing was held with Plantlife’s Head of Con­ser­va­tion, their spe­cies spe­cial­ist and loc­al pro­ject officer on 5 Septem­ber 2023. Con­cerns were raised over loc­al­ised poten­tial impacts on threatened spe­cies largely asso­ci­ated with mature aspen, hazel and willow.

It was agreed that Plant­life would col­late data on nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally threatened spe­cies on and close to the poten­tial release sites and provide details of spe­cif­ic trees that may require pro­tec­tion. The Park Author­ity will sup­port fur­ther sur­vey and mon­it­or­ing work at key sites and work with Plant­life and land man­agers to explore how to address tree age-gap and hab­it­at con­tinu­ity at key sites. Lichen trans­lo­ca­tion was dis­cussed but it was emphas­ised that this is not a mit­ig­a­tion meas­ure; it is poten­tially a safety net and short-term meas­ure. The focus should be hab­it­at reten­tion and enhance­ment to secure long-term con­tinu­ity for lichen and bry­ophyte hab­it­ats in a land­scape with beavers.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 21 of 45

Fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel The Park Author­ity liaised with nation­al expert Dr Peter Cos­grove regard­ing poten­tial impacts, sens­it­ive sites and wider fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel con­ser­va­tion with­in the Spey catch­ment, and with Pro­fess­or Yur­gen Geist (Uni­ver­sity of Munich) for a European per­spect­ive on the inter­ac­tions between beaver and fresh­wa­ter pearl mussel.

Beaver pres­ence can improve water qual­ity by redu­cing silta­tion and nutri­ents and lower­ing water tem­per­at­ure, cre­at­ing clean, well oxy­gen­ated sub­strates on which mus­sels depend. The intro­duc­tion of woody debris into the water course by beaver cre­ates stable sub­strate and refuge for mus­sels against the impacts of high flow, and deep­er water areas to enable sur­viv­al dur­ing peri­ods of low flow.

A poten­tial con­cern was if beavers were present in a dam­mable water­course and con­struc­ted a dam either on top of a mus­sel bed or imme­di­ately down­stream, which could ​‘smoth­er’ mus­sels in the vicin­ity. Mus­sels with­in the Spey catch­ment are pre­dom­in­antly in the main stem which can­not be dammed by beavers. We have recently under­taken a com­pre­hens­ive sur­vey of poten­tially suit­able trib­u­tar­ies and know of few­er than 10 where mus­sels are present, and even in these cases only in very small numbers.

We will under­take to mon­it­or these loc­a­tions for the pres­ence of beaver dams as described in our mon­it­or­ing and man­age­ment plan agreed as part of the Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al Assess­ment under­taken by NatureScot for des­ig­nated fea­tures of the River Spey Spe­cial Area of Conservation.

Atlantic sal­mon The Spey Fish­ery Board have been rep­res­en­ted by their Dir­ect­or, Roger Knight, on the Cairngorms Beaver Group since 2017 and are recog­nised as a key stake­hold­er in this pro­pos­al. They have provided key data on fish spawn­ing loc­a­tions and those trib­u­tar­ies with high sal­mon parr num­bers, which have been included with­in the report under­taken by The Beaver Trust and the Uni­ver­sity of Exeter on beaver hab­it­at suitability.

The Park Author­ity have sup­port from Spey Fish­ery Board that they will mon­it­or fish pas­sage across dams and fish hab­it­at suit­ab­il­ity above and below dams in key spawn­ing trib­u­tar­ies, as described in our mon­it­or­ing and man­age­ment plan agreed as part of the Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al Assess­ment under­taken by NatureScot for

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 22 of 45

des­ig­nated fea­tures of the River Spey Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion if suc­cess­ful in our pro­pos­al to bring beavers back.

Organ­isa­tion­al group responses The only form­al responses that were received out­with the online sur­vey were from on behalf of the Kin­gussie crofters, of Lag­gan, Nation­al Farm­ers Uni­on, Scot­land, and Nethy Bridge and Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil. See appen­dices 6.1, 6.2, 11 and 12.

In the online sur­vey, respond­ents were asked ​‘Are you respond­ing as an indi­vidu­al or on behalf of a busi­ness / organ­isa­tion?’. The break­down of 48 responses is as follows:

• 21 farm­ers and crofters
• 5 envir­on­ment­al consultants
• 4 estates
• 3 non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­isa­tions (NGOs)
• 3 oth­er busi­nesses / organisations
• 2 artists / creatives
• 2 gov­ern­ment agencies
• 2 research organisations
• 1 com­munity council
• 1 com­munity woodland
• 1 hotel
• 1 loc­al con­ser­va­tion group
• 1 region­al council
• 1 tour operator

The fol­low­ing busi­nesses / organ­isa­tions were named:

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 23 of 45

Organ­isa­tions asked for responses but only respon­ded inform­ally were: the Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency, His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scotland,