CUAG minutes 15 March 2024

FINAL CUAG minutes — Fri 15^th March 2024 Ven­ue: in per­son in Park Author­ity office, Grant­own and online attendees. In attend­ance in per­son: Peter Cos­grove (Chair & Park Author­ity Board), Colin McCle­an, Fiona Holmes, Grant Moir (all Park Author­ity), John Gri­er­son (AoCC/​LOAF), Han­nah Grist (Park Author­ity Board), Leslie George (SGA) lain Wilson (NFUS), Neil Mur­ray (SF), Stu­art Smith (JHI) Online attendees: Dav­id Frew (NTS), Richard Gled­son (ECMP), Tim Kirk­wood (Cairngorms Con­nect), Richard Cooke (ADMG), Steph­en Young (SLE), Graeme Taylor (NS) Apo­lo­gies: Mike Cot­tam, Andy Ford (both Park Author­ity) Will Ander­son (Con­For), Peter Clark (BASC), Rory Kennedy (GWCT,) Dave Windle (NE Moun­tain Trust), Peter Gil­bert (RSPB), Alis­on Hester (JHI) Minutes of last meet­ing: No com­ments, all accep­ted. Actions from last meet­ing: All either ongo­ing or com­plete. No AOB sug­ges­ted for today PRE­AMBLE: Remind­er of gen­er­al CUAG pur­pose: allow­ing bet­ter com­mu­nic­a­tion and rela­tion­ships between land man­agers with dif­fer­ent object­ives, shar­ing advice and guid­ance plus good prac­tice and research. Where the CUAG meet­ing is an open, friendly, space where all can feel free to speak on issues relat­ing to upland land man­age­ment, but is not strict Chath­am House rules. PART 1 — UPDATES:

1. Park fire byelaws

Park Author­ity con­sulta­tion is ongo­ing with the res­ults head­ing to the Park Board soon. CUAG dis­cus­sion included:

• Muir­burn to be dealt with sep­ar­ately by ScotGov?
• How to enforce a byelaw — pres­sure on rangers and resourcing the enforcement

ACTION – CUAG to let Park Author­ity know of any fire hot-spot locations

1. Deer con­sulta­tion

Scot­Gov have ongo­ing con­sulta­tion: https://www.gov.scot/publications/managing-deer- cli­mate-nature-con­sulta­tion/pages/7/

Park Author­ity have some thoughts on the pro­pos­als, and it’s been dis­cussed by Park Board, but no decision on a Park Author­ity response has been made yet. CUAG dis­cus­sion included:

• Explor­ing a ​‘Cairngorms’ brand for ven­ison and ven­ison sales out of season
• ADMG haven’t formed final response yet but cur­rent think­ing is they’re likely to oppose all changes sug­ges­ted in consultation
• Scot­Gov Stra­tegic Deer Board are pro­pos­ing tri­als for issues around low­land deer, and Sika control
• Detail of ​‘nature res­tor­a­tion man­age­ment orders’ is a key issue
• NatureScot are run­ning an ​‘issues log’ type pro­cess with­in all dis­cus­sion for­ums like CUAG to cap­ture dis­cus­sion and thoughts across sec­tors and then add this into the con­sulta­tion responses to ScotGov
  1. Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund

Update on open­ing of new grant fund, details here CAFGuidanceNotes.docx

1. Farm­ers Forum

Update on pro­pos­als for revised engage­ment between agri­cul­ture sec­tor and Park Author­ity. Park Author­ity are pro­pos­ing to have an Agri­cul­tur­al Advis­ory Group like CUAG.

1. Cairngorms Nature Action Plan (CNAP)

The Cairngorms Nature Action Plan is main deliv­ery mech­an­ism for nature object­ives in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the Scot­tish Biod­iversity Strategy in the Cairngorms. The new Action Plan will be developed through 2024. CUAG will have the oppor­tun­ity to feed in. CUAG dis­cus­sion included;

• If pred­at­or con­trol was to be included with­in new CNAP?
• NatureScot Spe­cies Licens­ing Review – a review has now been reques­ted by Scot­Gov to be com­pleted with­in 6months by NatureScot staff. Unsure yet what sort of pub­lic con­sulta­tion pro­cess might be invovled

ACTION NatureScot to report in more detail on this at next CUAG meet­ing (date set for 29 Aug 2024) ACTION NatureScot to share draft scope of review when it’s avail­able PART 2 — DISCUSSIONS:

1. Wood­lands and forestry

The Park Author­ity are sug­gest­ing cre­at­ing a short ​‘advice note’ that clearly out­lines the Park Author­it­ies role in Scot­tish Forestry con­sulta­tions. CUAG were asked for their views on the idea and were gen­er­ally sup­port­ive. Addi­tion­al com­ments from Scot­tish Forestry;

• not­ing forth­com­ing changes to the con­sulta­tion pro­cess, with more inform­a­tion being avail­able via the Pub­lic Register
• want prompt and early responses to wood­land con­sulta­tions dur­ing the 12 week due dili­gence peri­od — when it is easi­est to influ­ence forest design.

CUAG also discussed:

• The new UK Forestry Stand­ard, which doesn’t apply yet, but is likely to from 1^st Octo­ber, will require ​‘main­tain­ing the deer pop­u­la­tion to a level where regen­er­a­tion can occur’
• Scot­tish Forestry out­lined their future approach giv­en the recent large cuts in their grant giv­ing budget – see 2 x notes linked below https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1545-sf-briefing-note-46-fgs-budget-and-end-of- claim-year-man­age­ment/view­doc­u­ment/1545 https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/1554-sf-briefing-note-47-fgs-budget-update-and- budget-avail­ab­il­ity-for-new-applic­a­tion­s/view­doc­u­ment/1554

CUAG con­ver­sa­tion moved onto wider forestry/​woodland themes and to all con­sulta­tions run by Scot­Gov and the Park Author­ity and included:

• Feel­ing that all con­sulta­tions are just a ​‘tick box’ exer­cise and Park Author­ity need to improve on con­sulta­tions and engage­ment process
• Cre­at­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to con­sult is dif­fer­ent to mean­ing­fully consulting
• Con­sul­tees need to see that the pro­cess is some­thing they want to be involved in – that they will be listened to
• A feel­ing by some that the Park Author­ity aren’t doing enough to listen to those that work in the park as opposed to those that are just res­id­ent in the park
• How you get to a con­sensus pos­i­tion is dif­fi­cult in a con­sulta­tion process
• Park Author­ity very clear that a con­sulta­tion needs to allow people to fol­low through the pro­cess with 1) this is what we asked, 2) this is what you said, 3) these are the changes we made

1. Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP) Update on pro­gress with cre­at­ing this; first and second sec­tions largely draf­ted, third sec­tion wait­ing for out­come of Park Author­ity con­sulta­tion on a fire byelaw. With regards col­lab­or­a­tion between land­hold­ings and coordin­at­ing an effect­ive response to wild­fire there is only one form­al fire group in the South of the park and every­one else has inform­al arrange­ments based on reg­u­lar con­tact with neigh­bours. Cur­rently the IWMP pro­poses that every land­hold­ing should have a simple doc­u­ment with basic mapped inform­a­tion on what kit and resources avail­able with accom­pa­ny­ing con­tact details. CUAG dis­cus­sion included:
   • Land hold­ings with large fuel loads should have enough kit for fire­fight­ing – it’s a duty on them and they shouldn’t rely on neigh­bours with dif­fer­ent objectives
   • Sug­ges­tion that those with highest fuel loads have the least staff – countered with evid­ence that often they have more staff, but staff that aren’t’ neces­sar­ily prac­ticed in muir­burn so there­fore have few­er fire­fight­ing skills

ACTION NatureScot to share example cop­ies of their fire plans with CUAG

• Debate about the need for a form­al or inform­al approach to deal­ing with wildfires
• Can using exist­ing DMGs give some help­ful and more form­al struc­ture to the approach
• Exper­i­ence from man­aging wild­fires in Ayrshire relied heav­ily on good liais­on amongst a group of part­ners across a net­work and included reg­u­lar prac­tice exer­cises with Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS).
• Also, get­ting heli­copters out ASAP made the ulti­mate dif­fer­ence in man­aging to con­trol wildfires

Insur­ance – under­stand­ing from Park Author­it­ies invest­ig­a­tions that insur­ance against wild­fire dam­age isn’t avail­able for nat­ive wood­lands, but you can get it for com­mer­cial plant­a­tions and man­aged moor­land. But 2 x land­hold­ings with­in CUAG do have insur­ance cov­er for wild­fire on their nat­ive wood­lands, via NFU Mutu­al. ACTION Park Author­ity to con­tact NFU Mutu­al and invest­ig­ate insur­ance for wild­fires in nat­ive wood­lands fur­ther Fur­ther dis­cus­sion included:

END

• Polit­ics of the situ­ation, with dif­fer­ent land man­age­ment object­ives and the cur­rent muir­burn pro­pos­als at par­lia­ment, polar­ising the topic
• SFRS have a lim­ited amount of kit and do look for help from private estates
• Wild­fire is bad news whatever your land man­age­ment object­ives are, so people need to recog­nise this and still provide mutu­al aid
• Wild­fires need to be up the polit­ic­al agenda due to cli­mate change mak­ing them far more likely, so Scot­Gov and SFRS are likely to have to put more energy and resources into man­aging them
• Remind­er that these sorts of dif­fi­culties is what the Park Author­it­ies IWMP is try­ing to fix, but that the IWMP is NOT about try­ing to influ­ence any indi­vidu­al land hold­ings man­age­ment objectives