For inform­a­tion

Title: CEO Report and Con­vener Update Pre­pared by: Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer

Form­al Board Paper 1 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 1 of 12

Pur­pose

To high­light to Board Mem­bers the main stra­tegic areas of work that are being dir­ec­ted by Man­age­ment Team. These are areas where sig­ni­fic­ant staff resources are being dir­ec­ted to deliv­er with part­ners the aspir­a­tions of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

Nature and Cli­mate Change

1. Deer and herb­i­vore impacts: In ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ the Park Author­ity piloted a ven­ison sub­sidy scheme designed to incentiv­ise increased culls in parts of the Nation­al Park with highest dens­it­ies. Cull tar­gets for these areas were achieved and pop­u­la­tions reduced. NatureScot also tri­alled incent­ive schemes in two oth­er pilot areas which tar­geted roe deer in Cent­ral Scot­land and sika on the south-east side of Loch Ness. We will tri­al a sim­il­ar scheme in the red deer hind sea­son of ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. This will again aim to incentiv­ise achiev­ing cull tar­gets in high dens­ity areas. The level of incent­ive and the cull tar­gets which will apply will be dis­cussed with Deer Man­age­ment Groups (DMG) at their next round of meetings.

2. Gamebird man­age­ment: The Game and Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Trust report provides the first detailed assess­ment of gamebird release num­bers and dens­it­ies in the Nation­al Park. The sur­vey drew on data from the Nation­al Gamebird Census (NGC) between 2000 and 2023 and from inter­views with shoot man­agers on 10 estates from the 22 which are thought to release gamebirds with­in the Nation­al Park. The total num­ber of birds released by the ten estates, aver­aged across the three most recent sea­sons (since 2022), were 53,966 pheas­ants and 24,413 red legged part­ridges. The next step is to invest­ig­ate what the impacts of these releases are, both pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive on the biod­iversity of the Cairngorms.

3. Fire man­age­ment: The Dava wild­fire in late June covered some 10,000 hec­tares (ha) and was the biggest Scot­tish wild­fire in recor­ded memory. Over 100 people from estates, farms and nature reserves tackled the fire. The Park Author­ity Grant­own Office was used as the Incid­ent Com­mand Head Quar­ters by Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS) and as a cent­ral point to gath­er pro­vi­sions for the fire­fight­ing efforts from the loc­al com­munity. The Park Author­ity has helped organ­ise vis­its to the fire site by the Min­is­ter for Agri­cul­ture and Con­nectiv­ity and

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for the Dir­ect­or of Agri­cul­ture and Rur­al Eco­nomy. The Muir­burn Code Work­ing Group also visited.

The Park Author­ity is provid­ing fund­ing, admin­istered by Scot­tish Land and Estates (SLE), to help cov­er the cost of equip­ment and vehicles break­ages incurred by the private sec­tor dur­ing fire­fight­ing on Dava. The Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP) cov­ers many of the issued raised and staff have been work­ing with a num­ber of estates on devel­op­ing fire man­age­ment plans.

1. Spe­cies recovery: α) Beaver: 33 beavers have been released, as part of the five-year license agree­ment for ​‘up to 15 fam­il­ies of pairs, or 50 indi­vidu­als. 66 people were involved in 60 beaver kit watches in spring / sum­mer 2025, help­ing us con­firm breed­ing at eight of the nine beaver ter­rit­or­ies. Eight of the pairs pro­duced 17 kits. The annu­al sur­vey of the Spey has just been com­pleted Spey Dam to Grant­own-on-Spey, res­ults are being mapped and pre­pared. The beaver man­age­ment and mit­ig­a­tion group con­tin­ue to meet and dis­cuss how the Park Authority’s response to man­aging the impacts of beavers is work­ing on-the-ground.

   Funding was secured from the National Parks UK's partnership initiative with Pearl and Dean to highlight the beauty and importance of UK National Parks through cinema advertising. A [cinema advert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) has been produced to showcase the project.
   

   b) Fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel: The Park Author­ity con­vened a part­ner­ship of elev­en organ­isa­tions in June, to estab­lish the Cairngorms Fresh­wa­ter Pearl Mus­sel strategy group that will have over­sight and sup­port the devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of the recov­ery plan. To sup­port future trans­lo­ca­tion action, elec­tro­fish­ing and sur­vey work to estab­lish spat dates has been under­taken and genet­ic assess­ment is under­way. Due to low water levels on the Spey, the Park Author­ity, NatureScot and Spey Fish­ery Board staff moved around 2,500 mus­sels into deep­er water.

   c) Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund: Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Cli­mate Action and Energy, Gil­lian Mar­tin MSP, made the announce­ment on the Park Authority’s £1.2 mil­lion Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) award on a vis­it to Anagach Woods in August. Work under­way includes estab­lish­ment of wood ant and nar­row headed ant cap­tive breed­ing facil­ity and the UK’s first nar­row headed ant trans­lo­ca­tion to Mar Lodge in August. The Dee Resi­li­ence officer has been recruited, Dr Rachel Helli­well is being seconded into this role from

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James Hut­ton Insti­tute (JHI) and CREW- Scotland’s Centre of Expert­ise on Waters. Rachel starts in post in Novem­ber. Work is also under way on aspen, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel and caper­cail­lie emer­gency plan.

Plan­ning and Place

1. Paths and long-dis­tance routes: Improve­ment works on the Spey­side Way have con­tin­ued with more minor works dur­ing the peak sea­son before the pro­gramme of gate replace­ment to make the route more access­ible con­tin­ues in late sum­mer. Work to identi­fy poten­tial routes for the exten­sion of the Deeside Way from Bal­later to Crath­ie and then onwards to Brae­mar has con­tin­ued with input from a steer­ing group set up to include part­ners and communities.

2. Core Paths Plan Review: An inform­al con­sulta­tion of the Core Paths Plan and pro­posed amend­ments ran from May – August 2025, with 155 com­ments being sub­mit­ted via the online map and a fur­ther 48 com­ments received dir­ectly (by phone, email or in per­son). As part of this inform­al review the Out­door Access Team sought views on amend­ments tak­ing the form of re-align­ments (cor­rec­tions), removals (de-des­ig­na­tions) and sug­ges­tions for addi­tion­al paths to be des­ig­nated as core paths (addi­tions). The next steps will be for the team to pro­duce a con­sulta­tion report for the Loc­al Out­door Access For­um (LOAF) in Novem­ber, assess the responses and fur­ther devel­op the plan for form­al con­sulta­tion in 2026.

3. Vis­it­or infra­struc­ture: A num­ber of grant offers had been made util­ising funds from the Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme with these accep­ted in early sum­mer. This allows recip­i­ents to pro­gress works more quickly than in pre­vi­ous years help­ing to avoid less favour­able winter weather.

4. Ranger ser­vices: A ranger team of five per­man­ent rangers, 12 sea­son­al rangers and four train­ee rangers were in place in time for the main sum­mer hol­i­day peri­od. This peri­od saw fairly fre­quent fine weath­er and a num­ber of high fire risk warn­ings mean­ing there was a focus on fire related engage­ment on many patrols. Des­pite more fine weath­er dur­ing the main hol­i­day peri­od than in 2024 includ­ing over the sum­mer bank hol­i­day week­end the num­ber of live fires encountered fell from 135 in both 2023 and 2024 to 74. When vari­ations in the num­ber of patrols is taken into account, the num­bers have almost halved from 0.22 fires encountered per patrol in 2023 to 0.18 in 2024 and 0.12 in 2025 sug­gest­ing the sig­ni­fic­ant focus on fire mes­saging is influ­en­cing vis­it­or behaviour.

A gath­er­ing of Park Author­ity rangers and the wider fam­ily of rangers employed by part­ners took place on 12 Septem­ber tak­ing a look back at the sea­son as well as look­ing ahead to 2026 and most not­ably the implic­a­tions for rangers of the pro­posed fire byelaw.

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1. Volun­teer­ing and health walks: The new intake of 24 volun­teer rangers who fin­ished train­ing at the begin­ning of June have been out on the ground help­ing to wel­come vis­it­ors and look after the area. The new health walks in Aviemore and Kin­craig that began in the spring have now reached the point that they are oper­at­ing inde­pend­ently with loc­al volunteers.

2. Act­ive and sus­tain­able trans­port: A pro­cure­ment exer­cise for the next stage of design work for act­ive travel improve­ments in Aviemore, Boat of Garten with the option of an exten­sions to cov­er Nethy Bridge and New­ton­more was com­pleted in late July. Engage­ment with the pre­ferred bid­der is now under way with a view to design and pub­lic engage­ment work tak­ing place over the winter.

3. Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP): Work con­tin­ues on final­ising the evid­ence base for the next LDP. Engage­ment is cur­rently under­way on top­ic papers cov­er­ing hous­ing, cli­mate change, loc­al liv­ing and 20-minute neigh­bour­hoods, retail and town centres, and flood risk and water man­age­ment. The con­sulta­tion peri­od on these top­ic papers ends on 26 Septem­ber 2025 (see Have Your Say Today — Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan — Com­mon­place). A final set of evid­ence top­ic papers will be pub­lished for con­sulta­tion in late Septem­ber, with the team then work­ing towards final­ising the Evid­ence Report for the next LDP by the end of this year. Officers have also sup­por­ted Vol­un­tary Action in Badenoch and Strath­spey and the Marr Area Part­ner­ship to provide map­ping input for the Grant­own-on-Spey and Strath­don Com­munity Action Plans.

4. Plan­ning case­work: The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has met twice since the last form­al Board meet­ing on 27 June 2025. The Com­mit­tee has approved plan­ning per­mis­sions for a flood­plain res­tor­a­tion scheme on the River Dee near Brae­mar, 14 new afford­able homes at Mor­lich Court in Aviemore, two plot amend­ments at the ongo­ing hous­ing devel­op­ment at Dal­faber in Aviemore, and a partly ret­ro­spect­ive track applic­a­tion on the Muck­rach Estate near Dul­nain Bridge. The Com­mit­tee also resolved to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion for 35 new homes on land south of Lyn­stock Park in Nethy Bridge, pending the developer enter­ing into a leg­al agree­ment to secure a fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion towards com­munity facil­it­ies in the loc­al area. In addi­tion, the Com­mit­tee agreed to sub­mit objec­tions to three major wind­farm pro­pos­als loc­ated just out­side the Nation­al Park bound­ary. Scot­tish Min­is­ters noti­fied us that they would not call in the applic­a­tion for a new ware­house at the House of Bru­ar, which enabled plan­ning per­mis­sion to be issued in line with the Plan­ning Committee’s decisions of 25 April and 13 June 2025. Scot­tish Min­is­ters also noti­fied us of their decision on the plan­ning applic­a­tion for 22 self-cater­ing apart­ments, shops, hotel and under­ground park­ing at Laurel Bank in Aviemore, which they called in for determ­in­a­tion in 2023. They intend to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion sub­ject to the developer enter­ing into a leg­al agree­ment to secure a fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion towards act­ive travel improve­ments. Officers are currently

Form­al Board Paper 1 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 5 of 12

liais­ing with the developer with a view to reach­ing agree­ment on a fair and reas­on­able con­tri­bu­tion, which would then enable Scot­tish Min­is­ters to issue the plan­ning permission.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement

1. Com­munity and stake­hold­er engage­ment: With the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) Engage­ment team back up to full strength after two recent appoint­ments, their first task was to coordin­ate our attend­ance at this year’s the Grant­own and Greentown Shows, with good attend­ance and feed­back at both events. 233 people vis­ited the Park Authority’s Grant­own Show stand dur­ing the day (up from 207 last year), with the wide range of exhib­its a poten­tial factor. This included the farm machinery loan scheme, updates on the Cairngorms Future Farm­ing and beaver pro­jects, the Strath­spey Wet­lands and Waders Ini­ti­at­ive, our ranger team and an update on wild­fire man­age­ment in the Nation­al Park.

   211 people vis­ited our stand at the Greentown Show, with exhib­its includ­ing C2030 trans­port and nature pre­scrip­tion pro­jects, beaver and ant con­ser­va­tion work, the LDP and our ranger team. Next up are com­munity road­show events in Strath­don and Aviemore, plus the Bal­later Winter Fest­iv­al later in the year.

2. Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work: A short-term work­ing group made up of nine indi­vidu­als from a range of dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al her­it­age back­grounds (from farm­ing to museums and loc­al artists) have helped co-design an event at Boat Hall on 09 Octo­ber. The event aims to bring people togeth­er from across the Nation­al Park to net­work and explore col­lab­or­a­tion oppor­tun­it­ies; hear from experts in the field; devel­op a shared voice for cul­tur­al her­it­age; and con­sider how to influ­ence future policy, fund­ing and practice.

3. C2030 par­ti­cip­at­ory demo­cracy: The Grants and Com­munit­ies / Rur­al Devel­op­ment teams have been busy shap­ing the early stages of a new £1 mil­lion C2030 com­munit­ies fund, to be designed in tan­dem with com­munit­ies from across the Nation­al Park and fur­ther afield. Next steps include recruit­ing a co-design group dur­ing the autumn, who will then receive train­ing on fund design and par­ti­cip­at­ory demo­cracy meth­ods, before begin­ning to devel­op the fund in early 2026.

4. Pledge Pro­cess Plan­et exhib­i­tion: Work­ing with the Cairngorms Cre­at­ive Net­work (which now has over 80 mem­bers), the C2030 arts and cul­ture pro­ject has secured fund­ing from the Cairngorms Trust to devel­op a tour­ing ver­sion of their suc­cess­ful Pledge Pro­cess Plan­et exhib­i­tion, which was cre­ated in part­ner­ship with the sec­tor. The art exhib­i­tion – which is designed to con­nect land­scape and com­munity and inspire col­lect­ive action on cli­mate change – will now go on tour to Brae­mar and Kin­gussie in October.

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1. Cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions: The peri­od was dom­in­ated by the large wild­fire to the north of the Nation­al Park in late June / early July. As well as coordin­at­ing mul­tiple state­ments and react­ive media lines (in part­ner­ship with the SFRS), we also issued vari­ous high and extreme fire risks, which were dis­trib­uted both through our own chan­nels (on and off­line) and to a wider audi­ence via paid-for social media posts. An insert was also cre­ated for Cairn res­id­ents’ magazine, express­ing our thanks to the hun­dreds of game­keep­ers, fire­fight­ers, for­est­ers, stalk­ers, farm­ers, land man­agers and oth­ers who helped tackle the blaze, and ask­ing res­id­ents to help share the mes­sage about wild­fire pre­ven­tion in the Nation­al Park. We also issued a tender for the devel­op­ment of a comms and engage­ment frame­work relat­ing to the poten­tial intro­duc­tion of a recre­ation­al fire byelaw.

2. Over the sum­mer we secured sig­ni­fic­ant cov­er­age of stor­ies on a range of top­ics, includ­ing the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund, Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund and the five-year anniversary of our ranger ser­vice. These included fea­tures on BBC Radio Scot­land and Report­ing Scot­land, as well as nation­al and spe­cial­ist press. We also expect to be included in a spe­cial report on the wild­fires on BBC Land­ward at the end of this month.

3. Web­site and social media: The new Nation­al Park web­site went live in June and ini­tial feed­back has been pos­it­ive, with the new wild­life, towns / vil­lages, pro­jects and news / views sec­tions all heav­ily vis­ited. We have also launched a new con­sulta­tions mod­ule on the site, with the Core Paths Plan being the first pro­ject to go live (over 150 people respon­ded). Next up is the devel­op­ment of a map­ping mod­ule, which will allow us to cre­ate bespoke maps for everything from com­munity assets to fund­ing oppor­tun­it­ies, paths and trails, and con­ser­va­tion projects.

   Digit­al activ­ity over the peri­od was impacted by the depar­ture of our Digit­al Con­tent Coordin­at­or in July, but we were delighted to wel­come Beth Reid as her replace­ment in early September.

   Between 01 June and 01 Septem­ber 2025, we received 2.1 mil­lion impres­sions (up 111% on the pre­vi­ous year) and 132,816 engage­ments (up 156% on the pre­vi­ous year). Our engage­ment rate is 6% (up 21.6% on the pre­vi­ous year) and our net audi­ence growth in this peri­od was 4,946, tak­ing us to a total audi­ence of 74,177 across Ins­tagram, Face­book, Linked­In and Bluesky (up from just over 60,000 a year ago). Video views totalled just over half a million.

4. Brand­ing and pub­lic­a­tions: Copy­writ­ing is well under­way for the winter edi­tion of Cairn magazine, which will include a bump­er update on the pro­gress of those pro­jects sup­por­ted through the Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund. We will also carry a piece high­light­ing the pos­it­ive impact that grant fund­ing has made in the Nation­al Park over recent years.

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1. Inter­pret­a­tion pro­jects include the new Tomin­toul Sky Hide and refresh­ing com­munity pan­els in Nethy Bridge and Strath­don. We are also com­mis­sion­ing pho­to­graphy across a num­ber of themes (with a par­tic­u­lar emphas­is on the people of the Nation­al Park) and devel­op­ing mater­i­als for the new Dùthchas Award scheme.

Organ­isa­tion­al Development

1. Staff­ing update: Since June, the fol­low­ing staff changes took place:

2. Staff leav­ing the organisation: a) Joanna Hampson, Con­tent Cre­ation Coordin­at­or left and moved to anoth­er organisation.

3. Staff join­ing the organ­isa­tion: Extern­al recruit­ment activ­ity is at a min­im­um, as the Park Author­ity is oper­at­ing at full com­ple­ment, and recruit­ment is typ­ic­ally only to replace vacant posts, or part­ner fun­ded posts. Nev­er­the­less, the Park Author­ity is attract­ing a large num­ber of applic­a­tions and is seen as a very good employ­er. Recent appoint­ments are: α) Lawrence Murphy joined as C2030 Com­munity Engage­ment Coordin­at­or to replace a vacant post. This post attrac­ted 57 applic­ants. b) Beth Reid who joined us on a short-term intern­ship as Con­tent Cre­ation Intern applied for the Con­tent Cre­ation Coordin­at­or post vacated by Joanna Hampson and was suc­cess­fully appoin­ted to this role. She applied through the extern­al recruit­ment pro­cess, which attrac­ted nearly 50 applicants.

4. Ranger Ser­vice: We oper­ated almost at full com­ple­ment dur­ing the report­ing peri­od, with one sea­son­al ranger leav­ing early (in Septem­ber rather that at the end of Octo­ber) as she had been offered a job with anoth­er organ­isa­tion. This pos­i­tion was not replaced.

5. Staff appoint­ments: There were no intern­al staff appoint­ments in the report­ing period.

6. Roles appoin­ted for future start dates: We have suc­cess­fully appoin­ted to the River Dee Catch­ment Officer post. This is an 18-month appoint­ment, com­men­cing at the end of November.

7. Youth employ­ment: α) The four Train­ee Rangers who were appoin­ted for a peri­od of three months (June – Septem­ber), Adam Lov­ell, Geor­gia Soan, Isla Paton and Jack Capener

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are pro­gress­ing well and learn­ing a pleth­ora of new skills. It is encour­aging to note that one of the four was a Juni­or Ranger pre­vi­ously. There were over 150 applic­ants for the four positions.

b) Barnaby Fogg joined us on a short-term internship as Disability and Access Intern.

1. Equal­it­ies: The Park Author­ity hos­ted, 16 young people aged 13 to 18 from the Black Pro­fes­sion­als UK net­work who spent an inspir­ing day in the Nation­al Park explor­ing careers in con­ser­va­tion and rur­al devel­op­ment with the Park Author­ity team. Ses­sions covered nature res­tor­a­tion, spe­cies rein­tro­duc­tion and plan­ning, before the group enjoyed some hands-on time out­doors with the Park Author­ity ranger team. For many of the city-based young people, it was a chance to con­nect with nature, gain fresh per­spect­ives and spark ambi­tion on what rur­al careers look like.

Pro­cure­ment

1. The pro­cure­ment for the design of the Cairngorms 2030 Act­ive Travel pro­jects has now been com­pleted. The suc­cess­ful con­tract­or is Mott Mac­Don­ald, who sub­mit­ted a very strong bid both in terms of qual­ity and price. Con­tract dis­cus­sions are now underway.

2. Train­ing in the oper­a­tion­al aspects of pro­cure­ment has been arranged for the wider staff group and is sched­uled for the end of September.

Grant Moir 11 Septem­ber 2025 grantmoir@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

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Title: Convener’s update Pre­pared by: Sandy Brem­ner, Board Convener

Pur­pose

To high­light to board mem­bers and Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) and staff of the meet­ings and events the Board Con­vener has been attend­ing since the last Form­al Board meeting.

1. Gil­lian Mar­tin MSP: Hos­ted the Cab­in­et Sec­ret­ary for Cli­mate Action and Energy on a site vis­it to the Nation­al Park, announ­cing £1.2 mil­lion Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund grant for the Park Author­ity pro­jects. Dis­cussed a range of issues includ­ing those around the flex­ib­il­ity of land designations.
2. Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF): Con­trib­uted to a major vis­it to the Cairngorms by UK and Scot­tish rep­res­ent­at­ives of the NHLF, high­light­ing the deliv­ery of nature res­tor­a­tion pri­or­it­ies, com­munity engage­ment work, and trans­form­at­ive land­scape-scale col­lab­or­a­tion, while explor­ing fur­ther oppor­tun­it­ies for long-term stra­tegic partnership.
3. The Envir­on­ment and Forestry Dir­ect­or­ate (EnFor): – Met in Edin­burgh with seni­or Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment EnFor offi­cials and fel­low Chairs of Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies (NDPBs), delivered a present­a­tion on the scope to devel­op fur­ther gov­ern­ment and inter-agency com­mu­nic­a­tions, and dis­cussed a range of com­mon issues.
4. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and Loch Lomond and The Trossachs Nation­al Park Author­ity (LLT­NPA): Co-hos­ted joint meet­ing in Pit­lo­chry of Chairs, CEOs and Com­mu­nic­a­tions lead­ers of the Park Author­ity and LLT­NPA, dis­cuss­ing implic­a­tions of the Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment (Scot­land) Bill, stra­tegic com­mu­nic­a­tions issues, Pub­lic Ser­vice Reform, and stra­tegic issues arising over the next two years includ­ing Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) and LDP development.
5. Mar­ine Dir­ect­or­ate: Met seni­or civil ser­vants from the Scot­tish Government’s Mar­ine Dir­ect­or­ate on a river catch­ment tour, dis­cuss­ing stra­tegic aspects of river

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res­tor­a­tion plans and spe­cies recov­ery pro­jects with respect to migrat­ory fish spe­cies, fresh­wa­ter eco­sys­tems, and great­er secur­ity for our communities.

1. King’s Found­a­tion: Provided fur­ther update to King’s Found­a­tion Trust­ee fol­low­ing last year’s engage­ment day with Cairngorms landown­ers and man­agers at Mar Lodge on nature issues and housing.

2. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment: Met with Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al Net Zero and Dir­ect­or EnFor, provid­ing routine updates on pub­lic body per­form­ance and compliance.

3. Scot­tish Land and Estates (SLE): Met with rep­res­ent­at­ive of SLE fol­low­ing wild­fires, review­ing the pro­gress made by the Park Author­ity in devel­op­ing and launch­ing an IWMP, not­ing the call by SLE to devel­op a nation­al integ­rated wild­fire plan.

4. Major estates: Met indi­vidu­ally with the own­ers and land man­agers of sev­er­al major estates, dis­cuss­ing approaches to over­com­ing a range of chal­lenges and meet­ing the aims of the NPPP.

5. Game­keep­ers – Met with rep­res­ent­at­ive of the Scot­tish Game­keep­ers Asso­ci­ation, dis­cuss­ing the role of keep­ers in tack­ling the Dava / Car­rbridge wild­fires, the applic­a­tion of con­trolled burn­ing tech­niques, and the import­ance of effect­ive coordin­a­tion, train­ing and equip­ment avail­ab­il­ity across stakeholders.

6. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil: Met with Chief Exec­ut­ive, dis­cuss­ing work to sup­port com­munit­ies in the Nation­al Park and joint ini­ti­at­ives to bol­ster tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies. Sep­ar­ate dis­cus­sion with the Prov­ost of Aber­deen­shire about catch­ment-scale work in the area, and with a loc­al coun­cil­lor re coordin­at­ing approaches to wild­fire management.

7. Busi­ness: Met with Chair and Chief Exec­ut­ive of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP), review­ing work delivered since our last meet­ing and explor­ing fur­ther oppor­tun­it­ies for the Park Author­ity to sup­port busi­nesses in the Cairngorms.

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1. Fer­gus Ewing MSP: Met with the MSP for Inverness and Nairn, dis­cuss­ing the after­math of the Dava and Car­rbridge fires, the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of the Park Authority’s IWMP as the first of its kind in the UK, pre­par­a­tions for the applic­a­tion of the recre­ation­al fire byelaw, sub­ject to Min­is­teri­al approv­al, and oth­er aspects of the Park Authority’s work to mit­ig­ate against wildfires.

2. Gra­ham Lead­bit­ter MP: Met MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strath­spey, dis­cuss­ing issues affect­ing the people who live and work in the Nation­al Park and bey­ond, includ­ing ques­tions around com­munity bene­fits from energy developments.

3. Grant­own-on-Spey: Atten­ded annu­al Grant­own Show, met with com­munity lead­ers, and farm­ers’ and crofters’ rep­res­ent­at­ives, dis­cuss­ing the Park Authority’s work to help the sec­tor and fur­ther oppor­tun­it­ies to devel­op relationships.

4. Strath­don: Atten­ded Lon­ach Gath­er­ing, meet­ing inform­ally with loc­al author­ity and oth­er com­munity lead­ers, dis­cuss­ing issues affect­ing the area. This was in addi­tion to con­tinu­ing meet­ings with the Park Author­ity mem­bers and staff to devel­op a long-term, stra­tegic response to prob­lems facing Strathdon.

5. Car­rbridge: Atten­ded the Carve Car­rbridge event, meet­ing busi­ness own­ers and loc­al res­id­ents includ­ing the Chair of Car­rbridge Com­munity Coun­cil, dis­cuss­ing cur­rent pro­jects involving the Park Author­ity and future aspir­a­tions for the village.

6. Brae­mar: Atten­ded Brae­mar Gath­er­ing, meet­ing loc­al author­ity and com­munity lead­ers, busi­ness own­ers, and rep­res­ent­at­ives of stake­hold­er groups.

7. Nethy Bridge: Invited to serve as chief­tain of the Aber­nethy High­land Games in a per­son­al capa­city, while under­lin­ing in my open­ing speech the Park Authority’s com­mit­ment to help­ing com­munit­ies thrive in the face of mul­tiple chal­lenges, includ­ing sup­port for our nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al heritage.

8. Chairs Present­a­tion: Delivered the first in a series of talks by EnFor chairs to a range of Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment staff, cov­er­ing career exper­i­ences and the Park Author­ity con­vener responsibilities.

Form­al Board Paper 1 26 Septem­ber 2025 Page 12 of 12

1. Media: Inter­viewed for broad­cast and quoted on a range of stor­ies from the issues raised by the Dava / Car­rbridge wild­fires to the announce­ment of recip­i­ents of the 2025 Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund. Pro­duced columns for loc­al news­pa­pers on top­ics includ­ing the chal­lenges facing farm­ing and sup­port for loc­al culture.

2. Nation­al Park Con­veners: Met reg­u­larly with the Con­vener of the LLT­NPA Board to dis­cuss issues of mutu­al interest.

3. The Park Author­ity Liais­on: Atten­ded weekly liais­on meet­ings with the Park Author­ity Deputy Con­vener, CEO and Deputy CEO.

4. All meet­ings were in addi­tion to indi­vidu­al meet­ings and dis­cus­sions with Board mem­bers, seni­or officers, staff and oth­er stake­hold­ers on a wide range of subjects.

Sandy Brem­ner, 10 Septem­ber 2025 Sandybremner@​cairngorms.​co.​uk