Beavers and the Cairngorms National Park - Grant Moir

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity 14 The Square Grant­own on Spey PH26 3HG

T: 01479 873 535

20 Novem­ber 2023

Dear Badenoch and Strath­spey farm­ers and crofters,

Beavers and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

It was good to meet with you at the vis­it to South Clunes farm. I think the vis­it was worth­while with a wide-ran­ging dis­cus­sion across lots of dif­fer­ent farm­ing top­ics. On beavers I thought it would be best to set out the approach that we dis­cussed on the day in writ­ing so that you are clear about what was said by the Park Author­ity. I have also added in a sec­tion about flood banks that I hope will provide extra reassurance.

1) We are await­ing the res­ult of the trans­lo­ca­tion licence applic­a­tion to NatureScot. This is in line with the Park Author­ity board decision in sum­mer 2022 and with the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan that was signed off by Scot­tish Min­is­ters in 2022 also.

2) There has been an extens­ive engage­ment pro­gramme around the pro­pos­al to bring beavers back to the Cairngorms includ­ing drop-in events, site vis­its and meet­ings with all farm­ers that have reques­ted it. That engage­ment is ongo­ing and pre-empt­ive work to prevent/​mitigate poten­tial impacts has already star­ted at cer­tain loc­a­tions (i.e. tree protection).

3) The three loc­a­tions where the beavers are pro­posed for release have optim­um beaver hab­it­at. Beavers will dis­perse, but where hab­it­at is suit­able and food plen­ti­ful move­ment is usu­ally triggered through pop­u­la­tion growth or ter­rit­ori­al beha­viour so move­ment is unlikely in the short to medi­um term. This is sup­por­ted by mod­el­ling work under­taken by NatureScot.

4) The Park Author­ity is the applic­ant and has a beaver team in place. The Park Author­ity will respond quickly if con­tac­ted by a farm­er to ascer­tain wheth­er there are impacts arising from beavers and will sup­port landown­ers to access and go through the mit­ig­a­tion hier­archy for meas­ures such as tree pro­tec­tion and dam remov­al. This

sup­port will involve apply­ing for a licence on behalf of the landown­er should one be required. You are not alone in this; the Park Author­ity is here to help.

5) The Park Author­ity as the applic­ant will identi­fy highly sens­it­ive areas of pro­duct­ive agri­cul­tur­al land in the Spey catch­ment with­in the Nation­al Park, not­ably where there are flood banks less than 20 metres from a water­course. If there are signs of beaver pro­spect­ing and estab­lish­ing a ter­rit­ory in these areas, the Park Author­ity will work with the land man­ager to thor­oughly assess the like­li­hood of poten­tial dam­age to the flood bank. Where there is a pre­dicted high risk and high prob­ab­il­ity of impacts, the Park Author­ity will work with the landown­er and apply for a trans­lo­ca­tion license as per the mit­ig­a­tion hier­archy and licen­cing tests. The Park Author­ity will under­take an ini­tial sur­vey of the flood banks to provide a baseline of flood bank loc­a­tion and con­di­tion and peri­od­ic sur­veys there­after. When beaver are detec­ted in areas with poten­tially vul­ner­able flood banks we will upscale mon­it­or­ing enabling us to react quickly.

6) The Park Author­ity as the applic­ant has alloc­ated budgets to provide addi­tion­al­ity to the nation­al scheme, to enable mit­ig­a­tion to hap­pen quickly and to focus on issues of rel­ev­ance in the Nation­al Park. On the issue of flood banks in the Nation­al Park the Park Author­ity as the applic­ant will provide grant assist­ance for any breach in the flood banks in the Nation­al Park proven to be caused by beaver bur­row­ing where the flood bank was shown pre­vi­ously to be in good con­di­tion (as per sur­veys men­tioned above). This spe­cif­ic offer of grant assist­ance to remedi­ation of dam­aged flood bank will be in place until March 2026 when future agri­cul­ture pay­ments sys­tems are changed nation­ally. The Park Author­ity will be seek­ing to ensure the future agri- envir­on­ment schemes provide appro­pri­ate sup­port for farm­ers and the role they play in man­aging pro­tec­ted spe­cies and nat­ur­al flood management.

Beavers will mean change in the Nation­al Park and change is a con­stant when we look at the impacts of cli­mate with increased flood­ing and droughts. The Park Author­ity wants to work closely with farm­ers so that nature and people thrive in the Nation­al Park. To that end the Park Author­ity will be set­ting up a Farm­ers For­um with the first meet­ing in Janu­ary 2024 so that we can have reg­u­lar dia­logue on the key issues that face farm­ing in the Nation­al Park.

Yours sin­cerely

Grant Moir Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer