Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group — Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan

Meet­ing note

Thursday 31 July, 12.30 – 14.30 | Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey and Teams

Attendees

• Alice Broome — Forest Research, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist — Pri­or­ity spe­cies / habitats
• Car­o­lyn Robertson — Park Author­ity, Cairngorms Nature Manager
• Chris Suth­er­land — Uni­ver­sity of St Andrews, Read­er of Statistics
• Dave Par­ish — NatureScot, Ter­restri­al Ornithologist
• Helen Senn — RZSS, Head of Con­ser­va­tion and Sci­ence Programmes
• Jason Mat­thi­opoulos — Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow, Head of Eco­logy and Envir­on­ment­al Change
• Kathy Fletch­er — GWCT, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist Scot­tish Upland Research
• Steven Ewing — RSPB, Seni­or Con­ser­va­tion Scientist
• Stu­art MacQuar­rie — NatureScot, Deputy Dir­ect­or Nature and Cli­mate Change (Chair)
• Xavi­er Lambin — Uni­ver­sity of Aber­deen, Pro­fess­or of Ecology

1. Wel­come and introductions

The meet­ing began with a round of intro­duc­tions, as this was the group’s first meeting.

2. Terms of Reference

The Terms of Ref­er­ence (ToR) for the group were cir­cu­lated pri­or to the meet­ing. It was noted that the group needs to remain focused on meas­ur­ing the impact of activ­it­ies out­lined in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan and inform­ing adapt­ive man­age­ment. How­ever, there is a risk that respond­ing to stake­hold­er quer­ies may inad­vert­ently reduce focus, if the group is per­ceived as the main point of con­tact for all caper­cail­lie-related ques­tions and know­ledge gaps. To pre­vent this from becom­ing a bar­ri­er to pro­gress, it may be help­ful to estab­lish clear mes­saging and agreed pro­cesses for hand­ling enquiries.

The group also dis­cussed the fund­ing avail­able to sup­port its work. It was noted that addi­tion­al fun­drais­ing will be neces­sary. Cur­rent fund­ing secured for the deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan includes the Scot­tish Government’s Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund and oth­er schemes, e.g., Forestry Grant Scheme. How­ever, these are primar­ily focused on deliv­er­ing on-the-ground interventions.

Actions:

• The group to review the ToR in Decem­ber to ensure it remains fit for purpose.
• Car­o­lyn to work with com­mu­nic­a­tions col­leagues to identi­fy key mes­sages for the group.

3. Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan for the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan

Data shar­ing and monitoring

A dis­cus­sion took place on the import­ance of secur­ing buy-in from land man­agers to gath­er and share mon­it­or­ing data, enabling the group to ful­fil its role. It was noted that land man­ager engage­ment is crit­ic­al, and there may be a wider trend of some land man­agers opt­ing out of data shar­ing and mon­it­or­ing efforts. Since this data is vital for con­ser­va­tion, care must be taken to improve data col­lec­tion and shar­ing prac­tices where neces­sary. It was strongly recom­men­ded that mon­it­or­ing and data shar­ing be a con­di­tion of fund­ing awar­ded through the Emer­gency Plan.

It was agreed that data col­lec­tion should pri­or­it­ise inform­a­tion that strengthens the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el. This may require increased effort in areas where data is cur­rently lack­ing. The group can play a key role in guid­ing data col­lec­tion efforts to ensure qual­ity and rel­ev­ance and the mod­el itself can be used to anti­cip­ate gains in pre­ci­sion that can come from col­lec­tion of dif­fer­ent data types and sample sizes. It was noted that whilst the mod­el cur­rently only con­tains data from Strath­spey, which is only a small sub­set of the his­tor­ic­al dis­tri­bu­tion of caper­cail­lie, it nev­er­the­less cur­rently rep­res­ents the major­ity of the caper­cail­lie range in the UK.

The group will have access to CaperMap, a spa­tially mapped repos­it­ory of caper­cail­lie data. This includes lek, brood, cold search­ing, nation­al sur­vey data, and ad hoc records, e.g., from land man­agers. It was agreed that an intro­duct­ory ses­sion on CaperMap should be arranged for the group. Addi­tion­ally, it would be use­ful for the group to under­stand which on-the-ground inter­ven­tions are being delivered under the Emer­gency Plan, what out­comes are expec­ted, and what data is cur­rently held. The loc­a­tion of on-the-ground inter­ven­tions being delivered, e.g. cattle graz­ing, fence remov­al, diver­sion­ary feed­ing etc. has been mapped and these lay­ers will be avail­able in CaperMap. It was high­lighted that CaperMap also needs to con­tain hab­it­at data.

Times­cales and key components

A Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan must be in place by the end of the year. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, with sup­port from NatureScot, will draft the plan once the group has out­lined its frame­work and key com­pon­ents. As a key com­pon­ent of the plan, the group dis­cussed the need to define spe­cif­ic indic­at­ors of suc­cess for both the Emer­gency Plan as a whole and its indi­vidu­al actions, as well as the poten­tial to estab­lish a pop­u­la­tion target.

It is essen­tial that on-the-ground inter­ven­tions are tar­geted where they will deliv­er the greatest bene­fit to the caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion, and not just where there is pro­act­ive engage­ment from land man­agers. This is crit­ic­al to achiev­ing the over­arch­ing goal of the Emer­gency Plan and some­thing that the group can sup­port. It was noted that the Pro­gramme Board have raised the need for hab­it­at improve­ment plans across all core caper­cail­lie forests. This is being pro­gressed and find­ings from the groups’ work should feed into this.

A ques­tion was raised about the scope for updat­ing the Emer­gency Plan in response to new find­ings. Whilst the need for adapt­a­tion is already noted in the plan, there is a bal­ance to be struck giv­en the extens­ive stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion involved in its creation.

Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Model

A brief intro­duc­tion was provided to the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el, which will play a cent­ral role in the group’s work. Developed by the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow, the mod­el was designed to integ­rate pop­u­la­tion sur­vey and annu­al lek data in a real­ist­ic pop­u­la­tion dynam­ics frame­work. This enabled it not only to increase the pre­ci­sion of pop­u­la­tion estim­ates, but also to recon­struct detailed trends in pop­u­la­tion size, demo­graph­ic rates (sur­viv­al, breed­ing suc­cess), and their cor­res­pond­ing envir­on­ment­al drivers.

The mod­el integ­rates his­tor­ic­al data — such as lek counts, pro­ductiv­ity, and pred­at­or and vole abund­ance — along­side evid­ence of man­age­ment impacts, includ­ing improved chick sur­viv­al from diver­sion­ary feed­ing and increased adult sur­viv­al from fence remov­al. This enables the mod­el to fore­cast the caper­cail­lie population’s future trajectory.

The mod­el cur­rently incor­por­ates cov­ari­ates for diver­sion­ary feed­ing and fen­cing and pre­dicts that the pop­u­la­tion is likely to recov­er if both are imple­men­ted effect­ively. Meas­ures of suc­cess with­in the mod­el include aver­age pop­u­la­tion growth rate and total pop­u­la­tion increase. The mod­el can also pre­dict prob­ab­il­ity of extinc­tion and identi­fy ​“point of no return” thresholds.

Whilst the ini­tial impetus for mod­el devel­op­ment was giv­en from NatureScot, the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow has been devel­op­ing the frame­work inde­pend­ently since 2018 and the mod­el now rep­res­ents a more advanced and power­ful tool for link­ing pop­u­la­tion trends to spe­cif­ic man­age­ment actions. It is recom­men­ded that the mod­el be refit­ted annu­ally to new data includ­ing lek and brood counts, weath­er data, vole abund­ance, and records of man­age­ment activ­ity. The out­puts should inform both the Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group and the Pro­gramme Board, sup­port­ing adapt­ive man­age­ment and annu­al updates to the Emer­gency Plan.

Run­ning the mod­el effect­ively will require both time and fund­ing, and resources must be secured to main­tain and update it through­out the lifespan of the Emer­gency Plan. It was noted that whilst the Scot­tish Government’s Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund is avail­able to sup­port deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan, the fund­ing is only cur­rently avail­able until March 2026 and alloc­ated primar­ily to deliv­er­ing hab­it­at work on the ground.

Sev­er­al ques­tions were raised regard­ing the poten­tial of the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el, includ­ing wheth­er the Emer­gency Plan could be trans­lated into a series of ques­tions for the mod­el to address; wheth­er the mod­el can com­pare areas with and without inter­ven­tions, help­ing to identi­fy gaps and oppor­tun­it­ies for great­er land man­ager engage­ment; wheth­er it could incor­por­ate ​“new birds” to sup­port dis­cus­sions on poten­tial pop­u­la­tion rein­force­ment; and wheth­er it could help meas­ure the impact of disturbance.

Actions:

• Car­o­lyn to coordin­ate group access to CaperMap includ­ing con­firm­ing AGOL licences.
• Xavi­er, Jason and Car­o­lyn to meet about fund­ing to main­tain and update the Caper­cail­lie Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Model.

4. Research actions in the Emer­gency Plan

An update was provided about the research and mon­it­or­ing activ­it­ies out­lined in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan which the group is respons­ible for main­tain­ing over­sight of and provid­ing input as needed.

The fol­low­ing research and mon­it­or­ing activ­it­ies are underway:

• A sur­vey to provide a baseline for track­ing changes in pine marten pop­u­la­tions over time. This work is led by NatureScot and cur­rently being under­taken by the Vin­cent Wild­life Trust.
• Devel­op­ment of a scheme to gen­er­ate peri­od­ic indexes of pine marten activ­ity in the Nation­al Park using baseline data. This work is led by NatureScot.
• Con­duct­ing brood count­ing with dogs in tan­dem with trail cam­er­as to explore how the meth­ods com­pare to inform plans to main­tain his­tor­ic brood data­sets if brood count­ing with dogs is un-licens­able. This work is in its second year led by GWCT.
• Extend­ing the pilot genet­ic lek sur­vey to include a lar­ger num­ber of lek sites and run in par­al­lel with tra­di­tion­al sur­veys to fur­ther test the meth­od. Capa­city this spring meant drop­pings were only col­lec­ted from the lek sites included in the first year of the pilot genet­ic lek sur­vey, rather than a lar­ger num­ber of sites. This work is being delivered by the RSPB sup­por­ted by RZSS.
• Invest­ig­ate the feas­ib­il­ity of rein­for­cing the Scot­tish caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion with birds from Europe and per­form­ing exchanges with­in the Scot­tish caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion. Run a work­shop with stake­hold­ers to review the find­ings of the feas­ib­il­ity study and identi­fy next steps. This work is led by the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and has been under­taken by RZSS, the Nor­we­gi­an Insti­tute for Nat­ur­al Research (NINA) and the Uni­ver­sity of High­lands and Islands Centre for Moun­tain Stud­ies. The final report due is to be pub­lished in September.

5. Ways of working

The next meet­ing will take place on 23 Septem­ber and will focus on learn­ing more about CaperMap and the Integ­rated Pop­u­la­tion Mod­el. The fol­low­ing meet­ing sched­uled for 5 Decem­ber will focus on review­ing a draft Research and Mon­it­or­ing Plan.

It was agreed that, fol­low­ing this ini­tial peri­od of activ­ity, the group will aim to meet three times a year, aligned with Pro­gramme Board meet­ings and an action was agreed to set up a shared online work­space to sup­port col­lab­or­a­tion across the group.

Action:

• Car­o­lyn to set up a shared work­ing area for the group.