Cairngorms Nation­al Park Form­al Board Paper 2 Annex 1 27 June 2025 Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 53

Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan

1. 1.1 Intro­duc­tion Sum­mary of recom­mend­a­tions and actions 2 3

2. Redu­cing the risk of wild­fires start­ing 2.1 2.2 Wild­fire risk assess­ment on a land hold­ing Muir­burn 2.3 Man­aging for vis­it­ors and the poten­tial byelaw 2.4 Man­age­ment of recre­ation­al fires 2.5 Wild­fire danger rat­ing assess­ment 2.6 Com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups for wild­fire inform­a­tion 2.7 Sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions mater­i­al 8 8 9 10 11 11 12 13

3. Improv­ing the effect­ive­ness of fire­fight­ing when a wild­fire occurs 15 3.1 Estate fire plans 15 3.2 Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) 16 3.3 Equip­ment for fight­ing a fire 17 3.4 Train­ing 19 3.5 The role of the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice at a wild­fire 20 3.6 Com­mu­nic­a­tions at a wild­fire 21 3.7 The role of an estate office in a wild­fire 22 3.8 Land­hold­ings with no res­id­ent staff 23 3.9 Fire groups and oth­er col­lab­or­at­ive mech­an­isms 23 3.10 Col­lab­or­a­tion and mutu­al aid 24 3.11 Heli­copters and insur­ance 25

4. Build­ing wild­fire resi­li­ence in a chan­ging land­scape 27 4.1 Wild­fire resi­li­ence 27 4.2 4.3 4.4 Vari­ation in fuel loads across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Future trends in fuel loads and times­cales to increase resi­li­ence Increas­ing wild­fire resi­li­ence with­in high fuel load areas 28 31 33 4.5 Firebreaks 34 4.6 Cre­at­ing man-made firebreaks 35 4.7 Fre­quency of firebreaks in the land­scape 36

5. Wild­fire and com­munit­ies 38

6. Resource, mon­it­or­ing and review 41 Annexes 42

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1. Intro­duc­tion

Wild­fires threaten man-made assets like houses, wind­farms, fences and oth­er built infra­struc­ture and they also threaten nat­ur­al assets like forests, peat­lands and immob­ile spe­cies. The fin­an­cial cost of wild­fires can be high. Estim­ates for the cost of the Sad­dle­worth Moor wild­fire in 2018 run into many mil­lions of pounds for fire­fight­ing and envir­on­ment­al dam­age. Pub­lic con­cern around the wild­fire issue has ris­en in recent years.

The cli­mate in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park has already changed. These changes are spa­tially and tem­por­ally vari­able, with the winter months becom­ing both wet­ter and warm­er, whilst sum­mer months have become warm­er with vari­able con­sequences for the amount of water avail­able to go into soils and aquat­ic systems.

Future pro­jec­tions indic­ate that the Park will exper­i­ence fur­ther warm­ing over the com­ing dec­ades, res­ult­ing in an increas­ing num­ber of dry days and num­ber of con­sec­ut­ive dry days, dur­ing sum­mer months. Large sec­tions of the Nation­al Park are likely to exper­i­ence spring and sum­mer sea­sons when there is a poten­tial decrease in rain­fall. This will increase the risk of drier soils and veget­a­tion, with con­sequences for eco­lo­gic­al func­tions and the risk of wildfire.

Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan object­ives to increase the amount of wood­land and nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion; reduce the neg­at­ive impacts of red deer and oth­er herb­i­vores; and increase spe­cies and hab­it­at diversity on moor­land will pro­duce many bene­fits for biod­iversity and cli­mate resi­li­ence. They will also increase field lay­er veget­a­tion in some areas for a sig­ni­fic­ant peri­od of time. Large areas of mature wood­land and re-wet­ted areas will likely help cre­ate a more fire resi­li­ent land­scape in the future. How­ever, these hab­it­ats will take many years to devel­op and dur­ing the inter­ven­ing peri­od fuel loads will increase, as will the cor­res­pond­ing need for fire risk mitigation.

Land man­agers have been man­aging wild­fire risk in the Nation­al Park for many years. In light of the increased need for wild­fire plan­ning and the demands this may place on land man­agers, this plan aims to provide recom­mend­a­tions for land man­agers and actions for pub­lic bod­ies. These recom­mend­a­tions and actions are designed to increase the abil­ity of land man­agers to:

• Reduce the risk of wild­fires starting

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• Pre­pare for and respond effect­ively to wild­fires that do start; and
• Mit­ig­ate impacts of wild­fires in the landscape.

The fol­low­ing doc­u­ment sets out the actions and recom­mend­a­tions cor­res­pond­ing to each of the issues addressed. For ease of ref­er­ence, a sum­mary table provid­ing an over­view of these items is included below.

1.1 Sum­mary of recom­mend­a­tions and actions

		Page
Wild­fire risk assess­ment on a land holding		8
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should pro­act­ively risk assess their land hold­ing in rela­tion to wild­fire at least every three years or more reg­u­larly if required. To do this they should: • Assess high risk areas, where people are most likely to inter­act with high fuel loads. • Identi­fy meth­ods for mit­ig­at­ing the risk of igni­tion and the impact of wild­fire in the event of one start­ing. • Identi­fy all assets and fea­tures which could be at risk, and which are pri­or­it­ised for pro­tec­tion. • Map assets and areas of high risk and identi­fy means of pro­tec­tion. • Con­sider the wild­fire risk man­age­ment of neigh­bours and dis­cuss risk man­age­ment collectively.
Muir­burn		9
Action	All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers to adhere to the require­ments of the new stat­utory muir­burn licens­ing system.
Man­aging for vis­it­ors and the poten­tial byelaw		10
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should con­sider when and where they might give per­mis­sion to organ­ised groups for fires to be lit.

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Cur­rent approach to the man­age­ment of recre­ation­al fires		11
Action	If the byelaw is approved then the Park Author­ity must ensure there is adequate resource, includ­ing train­ing, to make its use effective.
Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assessment		12
Action	The Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um to devel­op a more robust sys­tem for devel­op­ing Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments by spring 2026.
Com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups for wild­fire information		12
Action	The Park Author­ity to identi­fy com­munit­ies where there is interest in set­ting up fire com­mu­nic­a­tion groups and then to facil­it­ate and sup­port their establishment.
Sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions material		13
Action	The Park Author­ity to devel­op and man­age a simple, coordin­ated mes­saging frame­work, which can be eas­ily adap­ted for use on-line and oth­er forms of media.
Action	The Park Author­ity to provide ranger sup­port, sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions to re-enforce respons­ible beha­viour mes­saging and the imple­ment­a­tion of a byelaw.
Estate fire plans		15
Recom­mend­a­tion	Every land­hold­ing should pre­pare a basic Fire Plan which is main­tained and reviewed annu­ally and shared with SFRS.
Action	The Park Author­ity will sup­port SFRS in main­tain­ing a register of estates and land­hold­ings with Fire Plans
Per­son­al pro­tect­ive equipment		16
Recom­mend­a­tion	Indi­vidu­als who might have to tackle a wild­fire should be equipped with adequate PPE. Lar­ger land­hold­ings should con­sider hav­ing a stock of PPE avail­able for more gen­er­al use.
Equip­ment for fight­ing a fire		17

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Recom­mend­a­tion	Equip­ment and machinery require­ments will vary accord­ing to landholding’s needs. It is recom­men­ded that: • All land­hold­ings should carry a stock of fire beat­ers, scrub­bers or leaf blowers appro­pri­ate to their needs. • All land­hold­ings should con­sider wheth­er car­ry­ing a stock of fire fight­ing back­packs would be appro­pri­ate. • Land hold­ings over 1000ha should have ready access to a machine-moun­ted fire fog­ging unit. • All rel­ev­ant estate staff should be famil­i­ar with the use of equip­ment above
Recom­mend­a­tion	Sig­ni­fic­ant fire­fight­ing assets, includ­ing farm machinery cap­able of trans­port­ing large volumes of water, should be registered on the Com­munity Asset Register.
Action	The Park Author­ity will work with SFRS to ensure land man­agers are aware of the Register and how to register assets.
Recom­mend­a­tion	Min­im­ise dis­tances that fire­fight­ers need to travel to replen­ish water sup­plies in a fire fog­ging unit and con­sider how to ensure fire fog­ging units can access all or most parts of a landholding
Train­ing		19
Recom­mend­a­tion	Employ­ers to ensure their staff who may be involved in fire­fight­ing are adequately trained and cer­ti­fic­ated for their role.
Recom­mend­a­tion	Estates which do not con­duct muir­burn reg­u­larly should devel­op altern­at­ive approaches to staff train­ing and famil­i­ar­isa­tion with firefighting.
The role of the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice at a wildfire		20
Recom­mend­a­tion	Per­son­nel who are likely to assume the role of WILO should be famil­i­ar with that role and reg­u­larly con­sider how they might put it into practice.

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Com­mu­nic­a­tions at a wild­fire		21
Recom­mend­a­tion	All estates should be part of a com­mon radio net­work with their neighbours
The role of an estate office in a wildfire		22
Recom­mend­a­tion	Estate offices should prac­tice their approach to wild­fire response annu­ally. This should take the form of an annu­al drill where estate office staff prac­tice pro­ced­ures around call­ing out neigh­bours, log­ging fire­fight­ers in and out and liais­ing with estate residents.
Land­hold­ings with no res­id­ent staff		23
Recom­mend­a­tion	All land hold­ings with no res­id­ent staff should give per­mis­sion for neigh­bours to access their land in the event of a wild­fire. Neigh­bours should be author­ised to take whatever action is required to effect­ively tackle a wildfire.
Fire groups and oth­er col­lab­or­at­ive mechanisms		23
Recom­mend­a­tion	Estates should con­sider being part of a form­al Fire Group or some altern­at­ive col­lab­or­at­ive group­ing to dis­cuss wild­fire preparedness.
Col­lab­or­a­tion and mutu­al aid		24
Action	The Park Author­ity will foster col­lab­or­a­tion on pre­vent­ing and tack­ling wildfire
Heli­copters and insurance		25
Recom­mend­a­tion	All land­hold­ings should devel­op a clear policy as to who can call out a heli­copter and when. Rel­ev­ant staff must be clear as regards the cir­cum­stances when they are per­mit­ted to call for heli­copter assistance.
Recom­mend­a­tion	All land­hold­ings should con­sider hav­ing insur­ance to cov­er the cost of heli­copter assist­ance at a wild­fire. If a land­hold­ing has an insur­ance policy, it must be clear as to exactly what is covered.
Increas­ing wild­fire resi­li­ence with­in high fuel load areas		26
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should con­sider man­aging veget­a­tion to reduce fuel loads at stra­tegic points in the land­scape. All land man­agers should consider

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	how best to break up fuel loads with nat­ur­al and man-made firebreaks.
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should con­sider main­tain­ing and enhan­cing nat­ur­al firebreaks eg mature wood­land, wet­lands, ripari­an corridors.
Recom­mend­a­tion	Con­sider the pro­vi­sion of water for fire­fight­ing eg by re-wet­ting, cre­at­ing fire ponds or main­tain­ing access to nat­ur­al water bodies.
Recom­mend­a­tion	All wood­land land­hold­ings should main­tain thin­ning oper­a­tions and con­sider con­tinu­ous cov­er sil­vi­cul­tur­al tech­niques as opposed to clear fell and re-plant. Care should be taken to reduce the devel­op­ment of lad­der fuels.
Firebreaks		33
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should map nat­ur­al and man-made firebreaks with­in the land­hold­ing. All firebreaks, both nat­ur­al and man-made, should be reg­u­larly main­tained to ensure they remain as bar­ri­ers or par­tial bar­ri­ers to wildfire.
Cre­at­ing man-made firebreaks		33
Action	The Park Author­ity to ensure that recom­mend­a­tions and actions with­in the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan are appro­pri­ately con­sidered with­in Plan­ning policy.
Wild­fire and communities		36
Recom­mend­a­tion	Land man­agers should engage with loc­al farms, crofts, com­munity groups and loc­al for­ums to dis­cuss pri­or­ity assets, mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures and emer­gency planning.
Resource, mon­it­or­ing and review		39
Action	Review the Plan annu­ally with Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group and Park Author­ity board per­form­ance committee.

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2. Redu­cing the risk of wild­fires starting

In Scot­land vir­tu­ally all sig­ni­fic­ant wild­fires are star­ted by human action, mostly acci­dent­al but some­times delib­er­ate. The most import­ant task in mit­ig­at­ing the risk of wild­fires is to reduce the chances of one start­ing in the first place. Wild­fire pre­ven­tion involves land man­agers assess­ing where on their land there is most inter­ac­tion between people and flam­mable fuels, it involves ranger ser­vices and patrolling, sig­nage and wider pub­lic edu­ca­tion, and may involve a fire byelaw and the pro­vi­sion of safe facil­it­ies for camp­fires and barbeques which can be used with landown­er permission.

2.1 Wild­fire risk assess­ment on a land holding

Com­plet­ing a Wild­fire Risk Assess­ment should be seen as the first step in the fire plan­ning pro­cess. Every land man­ager should risk assess their land hold­ing in rela­tion to wild­fire. The aim of wild­fire risk assess­ment is twofold:

1. It enables land man­agers to tar­get meas­ures which reduce the risk of igni­tion, for example identi­fy­ing where ranger patrols and sig­nage are most needed; and
2. It enables land man­agers to spa­tially tar­get meas­ures which may enable a wild­fire to be con­tained, for example firebreaks.

Wild­fire risk assess­ments identi­fy where people are most likely to start fires, for example at pop­u­lar camp­ing loc­a­tions and pic­nic spots; and where fuel loads are likely to be high, unbroken and con­tinu­ous. Areas of high risk are likely to occur where people inter­act most with high fuel loads. Mit­ig­a­tion to reduce risk should then be con­sidered a pri­or­ity at these points.

Wild­fire risk assess­ments then identi­fy the assets which are at risk. These may be build­ings, infra­struc­ture, nat­ur­al resources or places where people are likely to be. The vul­ner­ab­il­ity of each asset to wild­fire should be assessed and means of pro­tect­ing them considered.

When con­duct­ing a wild­fire risk assess­ment, land man­agers should con­sider neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties, both in terms of fire spread­ing from a neigh­bour­ing prop­erty onto their own land and the oth­er way around.

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Wild­fire risk assess­ment is not stat­ic. Fuel loads may change over time, as may the beha­viour of people. Assess­ments should be adapt­ive and car­ried out at least once every three years and not only at peri­ods of high fire risk.

• • • • • Recom­mend­a­tion: Land man­agers should pro­act­ively risk assess their land hold­ing in rela­tion to wild­fire at least every three years or more reg­u­larly if cir­cum­stances have clearly changed. To do this they should:

  • Assess high risk areas, where people are most likely to inter­act with high fuel loads.

  • Identi­fy meth­ods for mit­ig­at­ing the risk of igni­tion and the impact of wild­fire in the event of one starting.
  • Identi­fy all assets and fea­tures which could be at risk, and which are pri­or­it­ised for protection.
  • Map assets and areas of high risk and identi­fy means of protection.
  • Con­sider the wild­fire risk man­age­ment of neigh­bours and dis­cuss risk man­age­ment collectively.

An example wild­fire risk assess­ment tem­plate is provided in Annex 1.

2.2 Muir­burn

Muir­burn which gets out of con­trol can lead to wild­fires. Advances in cut­ting and oth­er forms of equip­ment which enable firebreaks to be cre­ated more eas­ily are thought to have reduced the risk in some parts of the Park, how­ever, incid­ents do still occur. All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers should com­ply with all aspects of the Muir­burn Licens­ing sys­tem when it becomes oper­a­tion­al and all aspects of the Muir­burn Code which sets out how to con­duct muir­burn safely and appro­pri­ately. Under the Wild­life Man­age­ment and Muir­burn Act 2024, muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers must ​“have regard” to the Muir­burn Code. Non-adher­ence to the require­ments set out in the Code can res­ult in a Muir­burn licens­ing sanc­tion. At time of writ­ing the Muir­burn Code has still to be finalised.

Action: All muir­burn prac­ti­tion­ers to adhere to the require­ments of the new stat­utory muir­burn licens­ing system.

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2.3 Man­aging for vis­it­ors and the poten­tial byelaw

The Cairngorms are a pop­u­lar des­tin­a­tion with an estim­ated 2.149 mil­lion in 2023. Great­er pub­lic access has the bene­fit that wild­fires are likely to be more quickly detec­ted and repor­ted. How­ever, Cov­id-19 stim­u­lated a marked increase in camp­ing and the light­ing of recre­ation­al fires. Post lock­down, many vis­it­ors were camp­ing for the first time and had little or no know­ledge of the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC), guid­ance on camp­ing and the use of camp­fires. The pop­ular­ity of camp­ing has con­tin­ued up to the present day with large num­bers of people camp­ing inform­ally and light­ing camp­fires at pop­u­lar sites such as Loch Mor­lich, Loch Kinord and the River Clunie near Brae­mar. This causes com­munity con­cern, par­tic­u­larly where camp­fires are being lit close to high fuel loads and to set­tle­ments. Large wild­fires at Can­nich and Dav­i­ot in the dry June of 2023 have added to those con­cerns. Sig­ni­fic­ant efforts have been made by the Park Author­ity, Police Scot­land and oth­er agen­cies to curb irre­spons­ible beha­viour, through edu­ca­tion ini­ti­at­ives and dir­ect requests.

The Park Author­ity launched a con­sulta­tion on fire man­age­ment, includ­ing the poten­tial intro­duc­tion of fire byelaws, in Feb­ru­ary 2024. A con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment out­lined three poten­tial ways for­ward: a no byelaw option, a byelaw at times of high fire risk, and a year-round byelaw.

The con­sulta­tion received a total of 1,664 responses which came from Park res­id­ents, vis­it­ors and land man­agers. Almost 80% of respond­ents thought a fire man­age­ment byelaw was part of the solu­tion to tackle wild­fire risk. There was no clear pref­er­ence on wheth­er there should be a year-round restric­tion on light­ing fires, or a restric­tion based on wild­fire risk. In Septem­ber 2024 the Park Author­ity Board decided that a sea­son­al byelaw, run­ning from 01 April to 30 Septem­ber each year, would be the most appro­pri­ate approach. The pro­posed byelaw requires approv­al from Scot­tish Ministers.

Any byelaw is likely to include exemp­tions where fires can be lit with landown­er per­mis­sion. This excep­tion might encom­pass organ­ised groups, for example Scout camps. Depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, ded­ic­ated facil­it­ies for organ­ised groups offer a much safer and more man­age­able exper­i­ence, which reduces the risk of fires being lit elsewhere.

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Recom­mend­a­tion: Land man­agers should con­sider when and where they might give per­mis­sion to organ­ised groups for fires to be lit.

2.4 Man­age­ment of recre­ation­al fires

Cur­rently, activ­ity to man­age the use of recre­ation­al fires in the Nation­al Park is under­taken jointly by landown­ers / man­agers, the Park Author­ity and pub­lic sec­tor part­ners includ­ing Police Scot­land. Many land man­agers will do this through site sig­nage, social media and face-to face engage­ment with vis­it­ors, using their own ranger ser­vices or oth­er estate staff. The Park Author­ity ranger ser­vice com­ple­ments this with addi­tion­al patrols at pop­u­lar sites where rangers provide advice to vis­it­ors and, where neces­sary, extin­guish fires con­sidered to be unsafe. Rangers also under­take patrols where they remove evid­ence of pre­vi­ous fires to try and reduce ​‘copycat’ behaviour.

To com­ple­ment this dir­ect engage­ment activ­ity, the Park Author­ity also under­takes com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity around fires both loc­ally and with nation­al part­ners. This includes pre-arrival activ­ity through the media and pop­u­lar social media chan­nels, pro­mo­tion of a leaf­let that is used by the Park Author­ity rangers and part­ner ranger ser­vices, and Scot­tish Out­door Access Code com­pli­ant signage.

If the byelaw is approved, the ranger ser­vice will con­tin­ue an approach based on friendly engage­ment with the pub­lic and will seek to inform and edu­cate. The byelaw will hope­fully deter most people from light­ing fires in the first place and will strengthen the abil­ity of rangers to deal with situ­ations where people refuse to put fires out.

Action: If the byelaw is approved then the Park Author­ity must ensure there is adequate resource, includ­ing train­ing, to make its use effective.

2.5 Wild­fire danger rat­ing assessment

For much of the year there is little risk of wild­fire under cur­rent cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. Fuels are damp and plants con­tain suf­fi­cient mois­ture to make them fire res­ist­ant. How­ever, when fuels dry out, Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments are made by the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um and peri­ods of Very High Risk or Extreme Risk are com­mu­nic­ated to a

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wide range of stake­hold­ers includ­ing the land man­age­ment com­munity via email. The Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um is led by Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS) who com­mu­nic­ate Very High and Extreme Risk to the pub­lic through social media. This mes­saging is amp­li­fied by a range of agen­cies and indi­vidu­als. Land man­agers will sim­ul­tan­eously be mak­ing their own inform­al assess­ments of fire risk as they observe weath­er and fuel con­di­tions on their own land.

The cur­rent Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ment sys­tem works well and is well received by land man­agers and agen­cies. It is based on good sci­ence and warn­ings are effect­ively and rap­idly com­mu­nic­ated. How­ever, the sys­tem is not robust as it is built around one key indi­vidu­al. A pro­ject plan is now being devised through the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um to build a more robust sys­tem with great­er human capa­city. Cru­cially, know­ledge of how to use and inter­pret European Forest Fire Inform­a­tion Sys­tem (EFF­IS) data should be spread among more individuals.

The Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um plays an import­ant role in dis­sem­in­at­ing the Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments to land man­agers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als asso­ci­ated with man­aging wild­fire risk. There is also a need for clear mes­saging to mem­bers of the pub­lic. Clar­ity of lines of com­mu­nic­a­tions is cru­cial in any new system.

Action: The Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um to devel­op a more robust sys­tem for devel­op­ing Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments by spring 2026.

2.6 Com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups for wild­fire information

The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Birds (RSPB) have set up a What­s­App group for the com­munity around Nethy Bridge and Aber­nethy. This is used exclus­ively for trans­mit­ting fire related inform­a­tion and con­tent is over­seen by the admin­is­trat­or accord­ingly. People mes­sage if they see smoke or someone set­ting up a barbe­que in a vul­ner­able area. Rangers and oth­er estate staff can then respond rap­idly if required. Such a group could be used to organ­ise resources at a wild­fire and to ensure only the appro­pri­ate amount of resource is deployed on site. This com­mu­nic­a­tions group is a use­ful ini­ti­at­ive with the poten­tial for a wider net­work of such groups. Should land man­agers and com­munit­ies be inter­ested in set­ting up sim­il­ar groups, the Park Author­ity will facil­it­ate and sup­port their establishment.

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Action: The Park Author­ity to identi­fy com­munit­ies where there is interest in set­ting up fire com­mu­nic­a­tion groups and then to facil­it­ate and sup­port their establishment.

2.7 Sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions material

There are sig­ni­fic­ant com­plex­it­ies in com­mu­nic­at­ing with the pub­lic around the dangers of wild­fires. The fol­low­ing ele­ments should be con­sidered when cre­at­ing sig­nage and oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions materials:

• A sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion (27%) of vis­it­ors to the Nation­al Park come from over­seas and a major­ity of those will not speak Eng­lish as a first lan­guage. The need for both sim­pli­city and con­sist­ency of mes­sage will, there­fore, be paramount.
• There are over 150 dif­fer­ent land­hold­ings in the Nation­al Park, ran­ging in size from under 100 hec­tares to over 40,000 hec­tares. Whilst the Park Author­ity will be coordin­at­ing work in this area, it does not own any land with­in the Nation­al Park. A com­mon approach or frame­work for wild­fire sig­nage – and wider mes­saging – will be required that bal­ances indi­vidu­al part­ner brand require­ments with the need for abso­lute clarity.
• The audi­ence for this mater­i­al is extremely var­ied, from long-dis­tance vis­it­ors to loc­al res­id­ents and work­ers, mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict the ​‘order’ in which inform­a­tion is pro­cessed. Vis­it­ors also use a wide range of tools to inform their vis­it, from third-party web­sites and social media to on-site sig­nage and ranger / staff inter­ac­tions. Rather than treat­ing these dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tions chan­nels in isol­a­tion, they should all be con­sidered as part of a single workstream.
• Giv­en that the pro­posed ​‘no fires’ peri­od coin­cides with the busiest parts of the vis­it­or sea­son, any sig­nage / com­mu­nic­a­tions require­ments will need to be simple to rol­lout and easy to imple­ment for part­ners on the ground. Sim­il­arly, there needs to be a simple and con­sist­ent means of noti­fy­ing part­ners of any changes as they arise, to avoid mixed mes­saging in dif­fer­ent parts of the Nation­al Park.
• All sig­nage and comms mater­i­als will need to sit along­side exist­ing SOAC guid­ance, Wild­fire Danger Rat­ing Assess­ments, etc. and avoid mixed messaging.

In devel­op­ing sig­nage and oth­er mater­i­al for wild­fires and poten­tial fire byelaws, the Park Author­ity there­fore pro­poses a three-stage pro­cess, informed by close

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col­lab­or­a­tion with part­ner estates, Non-Gov­ern­ment­al Organ­isa­tions (NGOs) and oth­er pub­lic bodies.

First, part­ners across the Nation­al Park and across related agen­cies (eg Vis­itScot­land and NatureScot) will identi­fy a long­list of key loc­a­tions and / or chan­nels to deliv­er wild­fire mes­saging to tar­get audiences.

Second, a simple com­mu­nic­a­tions frame­work for wild­fires, under­pinned by best- avail­able evid­ence on influ­en­cing vis­it­or / audi­ence beha­viour will be developed. This frame­work will not be designed for any one chan­nel or plat­form but instead will be adapt­able to everything from a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion to a road­side sign.

The final stage will involve the cre­ation of chan­nel-spe­cif­ic mater­i­als based on the above frame­work, includ­ing but not lim­ited to:

• Road­side signage
• Part­ner sig­nage (incor­por­at­ing part­ner branding)
• Scrip­ted ele­ments to guide face-to-face conversations
• Video mater­i­als
• Social media and oth­er digit­al advert­ising assets
• Media lines and key messages
• Face-to-face event materials.

Work­ing with exist­ing for­ums and part­ner­ships, includ­ing the Cairngorms Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group and the Nation­al Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Coordin­a­tion Group, newly estab­lished com­munity com­mu­nic­a­tions groups, land man­agers, oth­er busi­nesses and organ­isa­tions with a role in com­mu­nic­at­ing with vis­it­ors, will help ensure the effect­ive coordin­a­tion of inform­a­tion and a dynam­ic, adapt­ive approach.

Action: Park Author­ity and part­ners to devel­op and man­age a simple, coordin­ated mes­saging frame­work, which can be eas­ily adap­ted for use on-line and oth­er forms of media.

Action: Park Author­ity and part­ners to provide ranger sup­port, sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions to rein­force respons­ible beha­viour mes­saging and the imple­ment­a­tion of a byelaw.

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3. Improv­ing the effect­ive­ness of fire­fight­ing when a

wild­fire occurs

Estab­lish­ing a stand­ard­ised, high level of pre­pared­ness on all land­hold­ings is key to respond­ing effect­ively to a wild­fire, with fire plans for indi­vidu­al land hold­ings being an import­ant ele­ment. Pre­pared­ness also involves hav­ing appro­pri­ate equip­ment, train­ing for staff who might respond to a wild­fire and mod­els of col­lab­or­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion between those who attend a wild­fire. The role of an estate office can be cru­cial in a wild­fire and this role has a train­ing require­ment. The use of heli­copters, includ­ing the author­ity to request heli­copter assist­ance and adequate insur­ance to pay for heli­copter costs, are all import­ant issues to consider.

3.1 Estate fire plans

Wild­fires are high pres­sure events which test plan­ning sys­tems and decision makers. There are mul­tiple vari­ables involved, includ­ing loc­a­tion, ter­rain, wind, weath­er and fuel load. Wild­fires may devel­op quite rap­idly and there is lim­ited time to refer to a pre­script­ive plan. When fight­ing a grow­ing wild­fire, trained, exper­i­enced indi­vidu­als are required, who are able to make decisions about what resources are required and how those resources should be deployed.

Whilst detailed writ­ten plans are unlikely to be used when deal­ing with the incid­ent, the plan­ning pro­cess is crit­ic­al. As the basis for all fire man­age­ment plan­ning in the Nation­al Park, it is strongly recom­men­ded each land­hold­ing has, at least, a basic Fire Plan which includes the following:

• Basic prop­erty inform­a­tion: the own­er, their con­tact details and the con­tact details of key personnel.
• Inform­a­tion on neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties and their con­tact details.
• A map show­ing prop­erty bound­ar­ies, ren­dez­vous points, access roads, locked gates, bridge rat­ings, fire ponds or water sup­ply points. This map should be on a stand­ard Ord­nance Sur­vey (OS) back­ground at a scale of 1:25000 or 1:50000 so is under­stand­able to all.
• Grid ref­er­ences (or What3words) for the loc­a­tions of ren­dez­vous points with suf­fi­cient parking.

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• Instruc­tions on who to call out if assist­ance is required. On large estates this will start with the estate’s own intern­al resources but should also include neigh­bours, mem­bers of a Fire Group if applic­able and Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice con­trol room. Call out lists and con­tact details should be updated annually.
• A list of rel­ev­ant equip­ment held by the estate, its ser­vi­cing require­ments and check­list of when last serviced.
• Instruc­tions on who has author­ity to call for heli­copter assist­ance if required.

Con­tact details and oth­er inform­a­tion in the Fire Plan will change. Each Fire Plan must be updated annu­ally or when inform­a­tion changes. Review dates should be noted on Fire Plans. Fire Plans should be shared with SFRS.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Every land­hold­ing should pre­pare a basic Fire Plan, as described above, which is main­tained and reviewed annu­ally and shared with SFRS. An example fire plan is in Annex 2.

Scot­tish Forestry will ask applic­ants to pro­duce Fire Plans with most Forest Grant Scheme Applic­a­tions. Where rel­ev­ant, the Park Author­ity will ask applic­ants to the Cli­mate Adapt­a­tion Fund to have a Fire Plan.

Action: The Park Author­ity will sup­port SFRS in main­tain­ing a register of estates and land­hold­ings with Fire Plans.

3.2 Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE)

Per­son­al Pro­tect­ive Equip­ment (PPE) is essen­tial for those fight­ing a wild­fire. The spe­cif­ic PPE require­ments may vary depend­ing on the tasks being per­formed, but any­one involved in fight­ing flames should wear the fol­low­ing PPE:

• Fire res­ist­ant cloth­ing which does not ignite or melt when exposed to flames. This often takes the form of a fire-res­ist­ant boil­er suit and is best in bright col­ours to max­im­ise the chance of being seen by oth­ers in smoke or poor visibility.
• A face shield which pro­tects the face from radi­ant heat, and which pro­tects the eyes from ash and dust. This may take the form of a Per­spex shield. Face shields can leave ears and neck exposed to radi­ant heat and fire­fight­ers should con­sider how best to cov­er those when close to flames.

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• Fire res­ist­ant gloves which pro­tect hands from radi­ant heat and from dir­ect con­tact with hot sur­faces such as the met­al handle of a fire broom or scrubber.
• Boots that will res­ist heat while per­mit­ting safe walk­ing in rough ter­rain. Fire­fight­ing may involve close prox­im­ity to vehicles and All-Ter­rain Vehicles (ATV) and con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to pro­tect­ive toe caps to reduce the risk of injury. How­ever, steel toe caps can heat up when close to flames and there is a bal­ance of risk to be made here.
• Wild­fires gen­er­ate a lot of smoke and fine par­tic­u­late mat­ter. It can be dif­fi­cult to avoid some smoke inhal­a­tion when fight­ing a wild­fire. It is highly unlikely that estates will equip staff with res­pir­at­ory gear as this is expens­ive and requires spe­cial­ist train­ing. How­ever, those fight­ing wild­fires may feel more com­fort­able if they wear masks over their mouths and nose.

There are dif­fer­ent roles for people at a wild­fire, and