Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group and Pro­gramme Board- Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan

Meet­ing note

Thursday 6 August, 3pm — 5pm | Park Author­ity Office, Grant­own-on-Spey and Teams

Attendees

• Alice Broome — Forest Research, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist — Pri­or­ity spe­cies / habitats
• Andy Ford — Park Author­ity, Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change
• Car­o­lyn Robertson — Park Author­ity, Cairngorms Nature Manager
• Dave Par­ish — NatureScot, Ter­restri­al Ornithologist
• Holly Niven — Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow, Research Assistant
• Jason Mat­thi­opoulos — Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow, Head of Eco­logy and Envir­on­ment­al Change
• John Risby — Scot­tish Forestry, High­land and Islands Conservator
• Kath Leys — NatureScot, Head of Biod­iversity and Geodiversity
• Kathy Fletch­er — GWCT, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist Scot­tish Upland Research
• Shona Shent­all – NatureScot, Head of Oper­a­tions Cent­ral Highlands
• Steven Ewing — RSPB, Seni­or Con­ser­va­tion Scientist
• Stu­art MacQuar­rie — NatureScot, Deputy Dir­ect­or Nature and Cli­mate Change (Chair)
• Xavi­er Lambin — Uni­ver­sity of Aber­deen, Pro­fess­or of Ecology

Apo­lo­gies

• Alex Macleod — Forestry and Land Scot­land, North Region Manager
• Chris Suth­er­land — Uni­ver­sity of St Andrews, Read­er of Statistics
• Helen Senn — RZSS, Head of Con­ser­va­tion and Sci­ence Programmes

1. Review the draft Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan

The group reviewed the third draft of the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan. This was the final oppor­tun­ity for sub­stant­ive com­ments, with the aim of agree­ing the plan in principle.

The main changes to the draft were high­lighted and discussed:

• A dia­gram has been added show­ing the rela­tion­ship between the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan and the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan.
• The Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan now focuses on track­ing indic­at­ors of pro­ductiv­ity, with pop­u­la­tion increase and range expan­sion remain­ing longer-term meas­ures of success.
• The Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan does not seek to quanti­fy the impact of indi­vidu­al inter­ven­tions, as it is not pos­sible to carry out exper­i­ment­al work at the scale needed. It was noted that the plan should instead be clear about what is and is not cur­rently known about inter­ven­tions, high­light­ing key know­ledge gaps to help pri­or­it­ise mon­it­or­ing and provide con­text for inter­pret­ing results.
• A simple The­ory of Change has been added to the plan, and a more detailed ver­sion under­pins the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Model.
• A recov­ery curve has been added with ini­tial annota­tions. This should evolve over time to describe in more detail what changes might reas­on­ably be expec­ted at dif­fer­ent stages of recov­ery. The curve should extend to 2045, con­sist­ent with the pro­posed times­cale of the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan.
• The fund­ing table has been refined but requires final fig­ures. It should cross-ref­er­ence the fund­ing table in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan where appro­pri­ate to avoid duplication.
• A map of caper­cail­lie core areas has been added to illus­trate the geo­graph­ic­al scope of the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan. The Nation­al Park bound­ary should also be shown, and the text should make clear that the plan is primar­ily focused on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.
• Addi­tion­al pred­at­or data­sets have been included, recog­nising that incor­por­at­ing more rel­ev­ant data should strengthen ana­lys­is through the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Model.

Key points from discussion

The group sup­por­ted the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan extend­ing to 2045. Longer-term meas­ures of suc­cess, spe­cific­ally pop­u­la­tion increase and range expan­sion, will be reflec­ted in the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2027 — 2032. The Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan there­fore provides an appro­pri­ate longer-term frame­work with­in which these changes can be assessed. The need to align mon­it­or­ing and report­ing with the Cairngorms Nature Index was also highlighted.

The plan should set out a clear annu­al mon­it­or­ing and decision-mak­ing cycle, show­ing when new data become avail­able and are incor­por­ated into the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el, when assess­ments take place, and when find­ings and recom­mend­a­tions are repor­ted to inform adapt­ive management.

The group dis­cussed how adapt­ive man­age­ment will work in prac­tice using out­puts from the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el com­bined with oth­er evid­ence to inform assess­ments and recom­mend­a­tions. A pri­or­ity is to integ­rate the mod­el with hab­it­at suit­ab­il­ity maps cur­rently being developed by the RSPB. The maps are being developed using dis­tance sampling, with the strongest data cur­rently avail­able for the Cairngorms Con­nect area due to the avail­ab­il­ity of ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ LiD­AR data.

Inver­teb­rate data should be added to the data table in the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan. This remains a sig­ni­fic­ant evid­ence gap and efforts could be made to improve the avail­able data.

There is scope to give rein­force­ment great­er prom­in­ence with­in the plan, includ­ing in the intro­duc­tion to the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el as the mod­el can account for birds added to the population.

The risk table should be broadened to include back­ground envir­on­ment­al change, includ­ing cli­mate change and asso­ci­ated impacts such as wild­fire, as well as stochast­ic events that could cause a rap­id and poten­tially cata­stroph­ic pop­u­la­tion decline. Rein­force­ment should be iden­ti­fied as a poten­tial mit­ig­a­tion in this context.

2. Agree com­mu­nic­a­tions around the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan

The group dis­cussed key points about how mon­it­or­ing and pro­gress should be communicated:

• It will be import­ant to man­age expect­a­tions around eco­lo­gic­al lag, recog­nising that pop­u­la­tion responses to inter­ven­tions may take time to become apparent.
• Com­mu­nic­a­tions should be clear about what is and is not being meas­ured, and why. In par­tic­u­lar, the focus is on mon­it­or­ing pop­u­la­tion out­comes, includ­ing pro­ductiv­ity, rather than attempt­ing to quanti­fy the effect of indi­vidu­al interventions.
• It was agreed that a basic com­mu­nic­a­tions plan should be developed, set­ting out prin­ciples for when and how mon­it­or­ing find­ings are communicated.
• Report­ing should increas­ingly focus on out­comes rather than inputs – for example, mov­ing bey­ond kilo­metres of fence removed to what this is expec­ted to achieve in terms of redu­cing mor­tal­ity and sup­port­ing pop­u­la­tion recovery.
• The group agreed to pub­lish a pro­ductiv­ity dash­board, provid­ing a region­al pro­ductiv­ity estim­ate for the Nation­al Park. This can be presen­ted along­side out­puts from the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el show­ing the pop­u­la­tion tra­ject­ory and estim­ated times­cales towards sta­bil­ity, help­ing to demon­strate the anti­cip­ated bene­fits of con­tin­ued invest­ment. The mod­el could also provide pre­dic­tions against agreed future tar­gets, with uncer­tainty clearly presen­ted to help man­age expectations.
• As mon­it­or­ing shifts towards a broad­er set of pop­u­la­tion met­rics, rather than rely­ing primar­ily on lek counts, it will be import­ant to engage stake­hold­ers in devel­op­ing and under­stand­ing this approach.
• There needs to be con­fid­ence and trust in the mon­it­or­ing tools, data and ana­lys­is. Prac­ti­tion­ers should be engaged dir­ectly in devel­op­ing the pro­ductiv­ity dash­board to ensure it provides inform­a­tion that is use­ful to them, either pub­licly or through appro­pri­ate access to more detailed information.
• Report­ing on deliv­ery of the Emer­gency Plan should align with the pro­ductiv­ity dash­board. For example, the annu­al pub­lic­a­tion of the dash­board could be accom­pan­ied by a sum­mary of pro­gress in deliv­er­ing Emer­gency Plan actions.

3. Nation­al Caper­cail­lie Sur­vey plans

The Nation­al Caper­cail­lie Sur­vey, pre­vi­ously due to take place in ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇, will now be under­taken at the end of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan, in ²⁰²⁹⁄₃₀ or ²⁰³⁰⁄₃₁. The group dis­cussed the implic­a­tions for the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el, par­tic­u­larly the res­ult­ing gap in Nation­al Sur­vey pop­u­la­tion data between ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ and ²⁰²⁹⁄₃₀. It was agreed that the mod­el would be tested without addi­tion­al Nation­al Sur­vey data, rely­ing instead on avail­able brood and lek data, with the find­ings repor­ted back to the group.

4. Roundtable updates

The wild­fire in Glen­more Forest Park and Aber­nethy Nation­al Nature Reserve was dis­cussed. Its impacts on caper­cail­lie remain unclear and com­mu­nic­a­tions will remain react­ive until more is known. Whilst the wild­fire is with­in the core caper­cail­lie area, deliv­ery of the Emer­gency Plan can be adap­ted to help mit­ig­ate impacts.

Updates were shared on deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan. A fur­ther £500,000 of sup­port from the Scot­tish Government’s Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) has been secured and a new pro­gramme of work is being developed, build­ing on the pre­vi­ous round of NRF-fun­ded deliv­ery in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. Pro­gress high­lighted included:

• In the last six months, over 12km of deer fen­cing has been removed from with­in 5km of act­ive lek sites in the Nation­al Park. Cur­rently, a fur­ther 5km of deer fen­cing has been iden­ti­fied for remov­al before the next breed­ing sea­son. The Pro­gramme Board has also dis­cussed how to accel­er­ate pro­gress on fence removal.
• Dense heath­er has been rob­ocut across hun­dreds of hec­tares on mul­tiple sites and wood­land graz­ing has expan­ded to influ­ence over 6,000ha of caper­cail­lie hab­it­at across mul­tiple land­hold­ings, includ­ing com­munity wood­land and the pub­lic estate. Recruit­ment of a Con­ser­va­tion Graz­ing Coordin­at­or is under­way to sup­port fur­ther expansion.
• Diver­sion­ary feed­ing for caper­cail­lie was delivered on 19 sites this breed­ing sea­son, cov­er­ing 70% of sites cur­rently sup­port­ing female caper­cail­lie in the Nation­al Park. Cam­er­as have been deployed on dust­baths to help mon­it­or the inter­ven­tion and work is under­way to main­stream data col­lec­tion and analysis.
• Work is pro­gress­ing to expand vole mon­it­or­ing, and ini­tial dis­cus­sions have begun around improv­ing under­stand­ing of gos­hawk for­aging beha­viour in caper­cail­lie areas.
• Bog wood­land res­tor­a­tion will be a new area of deliv­ery this year, address­ing an ele­ment of the Emer­gency Plan that has not yet been progressed.
• Fund­ing is in place for RSPB to devel­op hab­it­at suit­ab­il­ity maps to help tar­get inter­ven­tions spa­tially, and for the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow to con­tin­ue tech­nic­al sup­port for the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el, includ­ing data updates, spa­tial out­puts and real-time ana­lys­is. Ques­tions cir­cu­lated by email on pri­or­it­ies for fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el were high­lighted. Fund­ing is also in place for GWCT to con­tin­ue brood count­ing with dogs along­side cam­era traps to com­pare mon­it­or­ing methods.
• Work is being scoped to explore social sci­ence input to bet­ter under­stand social and cul­tur­al factors influ­en­cing the deliv­ery of inter­ven­tions for capercaillie.
• It was noted that ini­tial ana­lys­is explor­ing caper­cail­lie pro­ductiv­ity along­side prox­ies for dis­turb­ance had not iden­ti­fied any clear relationships.
• Phases 1 and 2 of the Caper­cail­lie Rein­force­ment Feas­ib­il­ity Study are complete.
• The Cairngorms Nature Index con­di­tion assess­ments for the wood­land eco­sys­tem are almost complete.
• The Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan will be incor­por­ated into the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (2027 – 2032), which is sched­uled for pub­lic con­sulta­tion Octo­ber to December.

4. AOB

Stu­art handed over the chair to Kath, who will chair the group from the next meet­ing on 29 Octo­ber. NatureScot will there­fore con­tin­ue to chair the group. Stu­art was thanked for his con­tri­bu­tion and sup­port to date.

Actions

1. Car­o­lyn to final­ise the draft Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan based on all final com­ments received.
2. Car­o­lyn to work with Com­mu­nic­a­tions col­leagues to devel­op a draft com­mu­nic­a­tions plan for the Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan.
3. Holly and Jason to test the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el without Nation­al Sur­vey data and report back on its performance.
4. All mem­bers of the Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group to com­plete the ques­tions cir­cu­lated by email regard­ing pri­or­it­ies for fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Model.
5. Car­o­lyn to share the latest inform­a­tion on the Cairngorms Nature Index wood­land eco­sys­tem indic­at­ors and con­di­tion assessments.
6. Car­o­lyn to set-up a ded­ic­ated meet­ing to dis­cuss the out­puts and recom­mend­a­tions from Phase 1 and 2 of the Caper­cail­lie Rein­force­ment Feas­ib­il­ity Study.