Guid­ance note – man­aging recre­ation on lochs

August 2024

Back­ground

Recre­ation­al use of lochs and oth­er water bod­ies has seen an increase over the last few years, with the avail­ab­il­ity of more access­ible, light­weight sports equip­ment such as stand-up paddle­boards and inflat­able kayaks. Most water users act in a respons­ible man­ner and bene­fit from enjoy­ing the lochs of the Park in a peace­ful man­ner with little impact.

How­ever, the Park Author­ity recog­nises that in some situ­ations the increase in recre­ation­al use of water bod­ies may cause dis­turb­ance to sens­it­ive spe­cies, hab­it­at dam­age and or con­flict oth­er man­age­ment object­ives eg angling.

This doc­u­ment aims to provide guid­ance for land man­agers in man­aging recre­ation­al use of water bod­ies to min­im­ise neg­at­ive impacts and max­im­ising pos­it­ive bene­fits for vis­it­ors. It sets out the vis­it­or man­age­ment tools that could be used, the respect­ive roles of those engaged in tack­ling any issues and the mon­it­or­ing and evid­ence required by the Park Author­ity to jus­ti­fy any man­age­ment inter­ven­tions that restrict pub­lic access rights. This doc­u­ment is based on guid­ance from the Nation­al Access For­um (link in annex 1) which provides more detail on the prin­ciples and vis­it­or man­age­ment tools.

The same pub­lic access rights apply to most inland water as they do to land. Annex 1 provides fur­ther detail and out­lines the recre­ation­al activ­it­ies which are / are not per­mit­ted on water bodies.

Address­ing issues

Occa­sion­al spe­cies or activ­ity dis­turb­ance or hab­it­at dam­age by vis­it­ors is almost inev­it­able and may often be insig­ni­fic­ant. How­ever, there is the risk that large scale or repeated dis­turb­ance or dam­age can begin to have a big­ger impact. It is in these cir­cum­stances that vis­it­or man­age­ment meas­ures may need to be implemented.

The most appro­pri­ate mech­an­isms to deal with dis­turb­ance and hab­it­at dam­age will depend on loc­al cir­cum­stances and thus will need to be addressed on a site-by-site basis. Any man­age­ment meas­ures should:

• be kept to the min­im­um area and min­im­um duration,
• be based on evid­ence-based eval­u­ation of the issue
• be tar­geted to the rel­ev­ant vis­it­or user group / behaviour,
• show under­stand­ing and sym­pathy with users, aim­ing towards build­ing con­sensus, under­stand­ing and trust,
• use clear and effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tion, and
• be flex­ible — being mon­itored, reviewed, and updated / removed as required.

Devel­op­ing man­age­ment measures

A staged approach should be applied:

1. Evid­ence-based eval­u­ation of the issue eg:

Evid­ence	Eval­u­ation of evidence
Num­bers and type of recre­ation­al users, how they use the area etc	Bene­fits / prob­lems that result
Exist­ing vis­it­or infra­struc­ture and man­age­ment measures	Review of strengths / weak­nesses of cur­rent provision
Nat­ur­al her­it­age interests – key spe­cies, con­ser­va­tion import­ance, sens­it­iv­ity of hab­it­at, site des­ig­na­tions, pop­u­la­tion counts, evid­ence of change etc	Impacts on nat­ur­al her­it­age eg dir­ect injury, dis­turb­ance to breed­ing, intro­duc­tion of Invas­ive Non-Nat­ive Spe­cies (INNS) etc Dur­a­tion (short, medi­um, long term) Con­sequences / sig­ni­fic­ance of impacts Sig­ni­fic­ant / pre­dicted trends over time Oth­er causes of dis­turb­ance or trends eg weath­er, disease
Oth­er interests eg angling or hab­it­at dam­age – base data (eg angling days, income), evid­ence of change, records / images of phys­ic­al dam­age caused etc	Impact on oth­er activ­it­ies eg dis­turb­ance, loss of busi­ness, con­flict, Con­sequences / sig­ni­fic­ance of dam­age / impacts Sig­ni­fic­ant / pre­dicted trends over time Oth­er causes on impacts or trends eg weath­er, dis­ease, social change
Inde­pend­ent / sci­entif­ic stud­ies eg regard­ing spe­cies dis­turb­ance and impacts of activ­it­ies, growth of cer­tain activ­it­ies etc	Rel­ev­ance and applic­a­tion of such evid­ence to the site / situation

The eval­u­ation and poten­tial solu­tions should be based on evid­ence and any rel­ev­ant veri­fied stud­ies, any uncer­tain­ties or gaps in the evid­ence base should be high­lighted. The eval­u­ation should be object­ive, and explain why any pro­posed actions are con­sidered neces­sary, and how they will be kept under review.

1. Engage stake­hold­ers, seek advice from the access authority.

The res­ult­ing struc­tured assess­ment from the eval­u­ation should provide a found­a­tion for dis­cus­sion with others:

• stake­hold­ers – spe­cif­ic user groups, loc­al activ­ity clubs, loc­al com­munit­ies, nation­al gov­ern­ing sport­ing bod­ies eg Paddle Scotland.
• access author­ity – the access team can ensure that any pro­posed response is jus­ti­fied with respect to access rights. They can also assist in a medi­at­ing role with engagement.

1. Imple­ment and test vis­it­or man­age­ment techniques.

It is expec­ted least restrict­ive options are applied ini­tially. Meas­ures should be mon­itored and eval­u­ated as to their effect­ive­ness before any fur­ther restrict­ive meas­ures are con­sidered. Eval­u­ation would be look­ing to

estab­lish if there has been any change in vis­it­or beha­viour and ulti­mately, if this in turn is res­ult­ing in a cor­rel­at­ing change on the iden­ti­fied impact eg wild­life disturbance.

Sug­ges­ted vis­it­or man­age­ment tech­niques include:

3.1. Pro­mo­tion of respons­ible behaviour*

• Site sig­nage to pro­mote respons­ible behaviour.
• Dir­ect engage­ment with people eg via ranger patrols.
• Inter­pret­a­tion pro­vi­sion at vis­it­or centres / car parks / access points etc
• Codes of best practice.
• Com­mu­nic­a­tions / social media aware­ness raising.
• Engage­ment with user com­munit­ies and mes­saging via their chan­nels and from com­munity champions

* pro­duced jointly with appro­pri­ate nation­al gov­ern­ing body / loc­al clubs as appropriate.

3.2. Site lay­out and design.

• Pos­it­ive pro­mo­tion of areas — cre­ation / way­mark­ing of bank­side trails away from sens­it­ive areas, off-lead dog exer­cise areas, quiet water areas etc.
• Iden­ti­fic­a­tion of pre­ferred water access and egress points.
• Pro­vi­sion of wash down sta­tions to pre­vent spread of INNS.
• Segreg­a­tion — install­a­tion of screen­ing and hides to segreg­ate people and wildlife.

3.3. Pro­mo­tion of altern­ate sites.

It may be an option to dir­ect recre­ation­al users to an altern­ate site. There is a risk that this could dis­place vis­it­ors to oth­er sens­it­ive areas, and this should be dis­cussed with the man­ager / own­er of the pro­posed altern­at­ive and the access authority.

Meas­ures should be tri­alled for an appro­pri­ate amount of time, defined on a case-by-case basis and agreed with those involved. If the eval­u­ation of the above man­age­ment meas­ures indic­ates that there has been no impact on address­ing the issues, please con­tact the access team to dis­cuss next steps.

3.4. Agreed loc­al guid­ance / advis­ory measures.

If all the evid­ence jus­ti­fies it, con­sid­er­a­tion can be giv­en to devel­op­ment of spe­cif­ic loc­al access guid­ance. This may involve ​‘stronger’ mes­sages to vis­it­ors, eg dogs on leads (without ​‘at heel’ option), dir­ect requests to avoid par­tic­u­lar areas alto­geth­er (eg zon­ing), or lim­it­ing num­bers at crit­ic­al times (eg bird breed­ing season).

Zon­ing of water bod­ies. It is likely any zon­ing would be sea­son­al, it should be reas­on­able in nature (tak­ing due care not to restrict the respons­ible exer­cise of access rights), clearly explained onsite, and eval­u­ated annually.

Zon­ing for shared activ­ity use. The water body is zoned into two equal parts eg recre­ation­al use on one side and angling on the other.

Zon­ing for wild­life pro­tec­tion. Buf­fer zones where recre­ation­al activ­it­ies are not per­mit­ted might need to be cre­ated around eg nest­ing areas.

Any pro­posed access guid­ance should be agreed with the access author­ity and the Loc­al Out­door Access For­um (LOAF) pri­or to imple­ment­a­tion. It may also be neces­sary to fur­ther con­sult and agree with wider stake­hold­ers; the landown­er, stat­utory bod­ies eg NatureScot, loc­al user groups / clubs, rep­res­ent­at­ive recre­ation­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies (such as Paddle Scot­land) and loc­al communities.

Such guid­ance should be mon­itored and reviewed at an appro­pri­ate and agreed times­cale (usu­ally annu­ally) with updates provided to the access author­ity / LOAF.

Note: These types of meas­ure are inform­al in nature and would not have a spe­cif­ic stat­utory basis under the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003*.

This has two implications:

• Any requests to the pub­lic would be advis­ory and should gen­er­ally not be worded in a dir­ect­ive or instruc­tion­al way.
• Such meas­ures could, in prin­ciple, be open to chal­lenge under the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 if they have not gone through due pro­cess, as out­lined above, in their devel­op­ment and agreement.

Examples of such vol­un­tary access agree­ments in place in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park include the River Spey loc­al users agree­ment (pad­dling and angling), and Loch Kinord access guid­ance (bird breed­ing and pad­dling). Fur­ther inform­a­tion and links to these are in Annex 1.

*Ignor­ing guid­ance could how­ever be an offence under oth­er legis­la­tion if, for example, delib­er­ate or reck­less dis­turb­ance of a pro­tec­ted spe­cies occurred.

3.5. Form­al man­age­ment measures

Any form­al meas­ures eg byelaws would only be con­sidered as a last resort, when all oth­er meas­ures have clearly failed.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity role.

The access team can provide advice and guid­ance related to any access and vis­it­or man­age­ment issues. They can also assist with prac­tic­al meas­ures eg pro­vi­sion of signs, ranger patrol sup­port and enga­ging with stake­hold­ers and the LOAF group.

It is essen­tial to seek advice from the team in their role as the access author­ity if con­sid­er­ing devel­op­ing any advis­ory man­age­ment meas­ures such as access guid­ance / vol­un­tary agreements.

Con­tact: outdooraccess@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Annex 1

The Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 provides a stat­utory right of respons­ible access to most land and inland water. The Scot­tish Out­door Access Code notes that any ​“ref­er­ences to land should be taken to include inland water”.

Pop­u­lar recre­ation­al water-based activities:

With­in access rights	Not with­in access rights — requires landown­er permission
Any recre­ation­al water sport, eg: Canoe­ing, kayak­ing Row­ing Stand up Paddle­board­ing (SUP) Sail­ing Wind surf­ing Foil­ing Swim­ming / wild swim­ming Raft­ing Tubing | Any water­craft that is util­ising a motor or form of mech­an­ic­al propul­sion (includ­ing elec­tric motors), eg: Motor­boats Trolling motors on boats E‑foiling * Elec­tric paddle­board motors
Instruct­ors lead­ing water sports les­sons, activ­ity pro­viders guid­ing groups	Angling / fishing

Com­pet­it­ive water sport events / races may require landown­er per­mis­sion depend­ing on the circumstances.

Fur­ther inform­a­tion / resources

• Scot­tish Out­door Access Code advice — Wild­life dis­turb­ance / Water based activities
• Paddle­Scot­land — Pro­tect­ing Our Envir­on­ment | Paddle Scot­land | Scotland
• Nation­al Access For­um guid­ance — man­aging pub­lic access in areas of wild­life sens­it­iv­ity.
• Example: River Spey — Anglers & Pad­dlers loc­al users agreement
• Example: Loch Kinord — Paper presen­ted to the LOAF group regard­ing access guid­ance at Loch Kinord
• Guid­ance book­let — Using inland water respons­ibly, guid­ance for all water users