East Cairngorms Moorland Partnership meeting minutes - September 2025

ECMP Part­ners’ meeting

Hybrid meet­ing at Glen­liv­et Estate Office, Tomin­toul, and online on 30 Sept. 2025

Present: Colin McCle­an (Chair, CNPA), Dav­id Frew (Mar Lodge), Joel Pater­son (agent for Glen­liv­et), Mark Nicolson (Mar), Ross Ewing (SLE), Catri­ona Walk­er (agent for Mar), Jos Mil­ner (ECMP), Chris Cas­sels (CES, online), Faye Gonza­lez (agent for Abergel­die, online).

Apo­lo­gies: Andy Ford (CNPA), Andrew Young (Glenavon), Clive Meikle (Glenavon).

1. Minutes of last meet­ing & mat­ters arising Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • All actions from pre­vi­ous meet­ing (Mar. 2025) were dis­charged except the following:
   • Το ascer­tain NatureScot’s plan regard­ing their pro­gramme for mon­it­or­ing des­ig­nated sites. C/F
   • The num­ber of rur­al busi­nesses sup­por­ted by ECMP estates. It was agreed to keep the focus on exist­ing tar­gets included in 5‑y Action Plan, as dis­cussed in item 5 below. | AF

2. Action Plan pro­gress Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • Each part­ner gave an over­view of recent or on-going activ­it­ies that are con­trib­ut­ing to pro­gress with the Partnership’s action plan, includ­ing an immin­ent sub­mis­sion of an FGS applic­a­tion under the nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion option, remov­al of sitka spruce regen­er­a­tion from a peat­land site, com­ple­tion of a large wood struc­ture river res­tor­a­tion pro­ject, and dis­cus­sion around the use of SSEN fund­ing for wood­land cre­ation / protection.
   • Meas­ure­ment of peat depths for muir­burn – recent changes have been made to guid­ance on NatureScot web­site fol­low­ing our joint site vis­it day, but have caused con­fu­sion as amend­ments have not been dated. Part­ners agreed to share learn­ing and exper­i­ences of the licens­ing applic­a­tion pro­cess. It was also sug­ges­ted that mem­ber­ship of ECMP be included in applic­a­tions. | Estates
   • Mar offered estate staff from oth­er ECMP estates the oppor­tun­ity to gain fur­ther muir­burn exper­i­ence on the hill with them. Any takers to con­tact Mar or JM. | Estate staff

3. 10 years of ECMP Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • JM presen­ted slides cov­er­ing the main achieve­ments of the Part­ner­ship. Part­ners wanted oppor­tun­ity to provide feed­back on the present­a­tion with a view to mak­ing it more widely access­ible. This should include inform­a­tion on activ­it­ies that con­trib­ute to ECMP tar­gets that not cur­rently men­tioned. Dead­line for com­ments to JM: 24/10/25. | Estates
   • Under Research & Mon­it­or­ing, MN asked about out­comes of Naomi Housego’s PhD which included field­work on Mar. Papers to be cir­cu­lated. | JM
   • There was also a request for the sci­entif­ic evid­ence that muir­burn dries out peat­lands. | JM

4. Future of ECMP & next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • Part­ners felt that 10 y achieve­ments show that Part­ner­ship is worth­while. All estates present were keen to con­tin­ue involve­ment. The pros & cons of increas­ing the mem­ber­ship (new energy but increased dif­fi­culty of deliv­er­ing pro­jects, respect­ively) was dis­cussed. It was also felt that ECMP estates could work pos­it­ively with neigh­bours without them neces­sar­ily being members.
   • Oppor­tun­ity to form a Wild­life Estates Scot­land (WES) Cluster of neigh­bour­ing estates, includ­ing both ECMP mem­bers and non-mem­bers. Part­ners agreed fur­ther thought and dis­cus­sion was required. | All
   • Estates seemed keen to do more togeth­er, e.g. col­lab­or­ate on pro­jects close to marches. Estates should pro­pose suit­able oppor­tun­it­ies. | Estates
   • Site vis­it with NatureScot on muir­burn licen­cing was viewed as a suc­cess. Find oppor­tun­it­ies for oth­er sim­il­ar events. | CNPA / JM

5. Ardt­ornish Impact Report Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • It was agreed that this was a very inter­est­ing report but there was also recog­ni­tion of the huge amount of work to col­late the data. ECMP does not have capa­city to do the same but 10 year achieve­ments could serve well to demon­strate impacts. See Action in 3. above.

6. AOB Dis­cussed | Action —-| — -

   • ECMP minutes to be made pub­licly avail­able on Park Author­ity web­site. | JM
   • Dates of future meet­ings to be shared as digit­al cal­en­dar appoint­ments. | JM