Item6Appendix1Plans20210064DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 6 Appendix | 14/05/2021

AGENDA ITEM 6

APPENDIX I

2021/0064/DET

PLANS

SF Pro­posed track form­a­tion over­view loc­a­tion map

Legend: Pro­posed track form­a­tion RSPB Reserves- Pub­lic (UK) (poly­gons)

Acknow­ledge­ments & notes: Cre­ated by: RSPB Crown Copy­right. All rights reserved. RSPB licence 100021 787.

Insh Marshes pro­posed track spe­cific­a­tion. Mater­i­als & con­struc­tion: . Exist­ing sur­face to be stripped down to form­a­tion level to a width of 3m. Stripped veget­a­tion to be retained Ter­ram geo­tex­tile mem­brane to be laid on level sur­face Loc­al stone and gravel (max size 150mm) to be added to an aver­age depth of 300mm and com­pacted No fine sur­face mater­i­al will be used because this area is liable to flood­ing Pro­file to be slightly cambered to allow water run-off Stripped veget­a­tion from the ini­tial excav­a­tion to be laid over the edges to provide sta­bil­ity The final track width will thus be 2.5m

Track cre­ation at Insh Marshes — the rationale.

Back­ground. Most of the graz­ing marsh to the north of Insh vil­lage (Insh Fen) is cur­rently grazed by our ten­ant farm­er at Dell of Kil­liehuntly Farm (to the west of Insh Fen) on a sea­son­al graz­ing let. He needs to check live­stock daily dur­ing the graz­ing sea­son but it has become increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to access Insh Fen by vehicle dir­ectly from Dell of Kil­liehuntly Farm because there is no link­ing track and the ground is very boggy. We are there­fore pro­pos­ing 470m of new track to link Dell of Kil­liehuntly and Insh Fen com­part­ments. This track will also be reg­u­larly used by RSPB staff and con­tract­ors for check­ing live­stock, hab­it­at man­age­ment and monitoring/​survey.

Spe­cific­a­tion. New track: 2.5m wide, 300mm of quarry crush­er mater­i­al laid onto ter­ram mat­ting and rolled. The mater­i­al will be sourced from either Alvie Quarry or an on-site quarry.

The above work would be car­ried out by a com­pet­ent loc­al con­tract­or via a ten­der­ing process.

SNH. Being a des­ig­nated site (SSSI, SAC, SPA, NNR), SNH were asked for their input before apply­ing for plan­ning per­mis­sion. Anne Elli­ott (Loc­al SNH officer) and Debbie Spray (SNH Wet­land Eco­lo­gist) vis­ited the site in sum­mer 2018. They were sup­port­ive of the pro­ject but to avoid neg­at­ive impact, the route of the new track was altered slightly.

Plan­ning applic­a­tion 2021/0064/DET | Form­a­tion of track | Land 810M SW of the School­house Insh Kingussie

Sup­ple­ment­ary inform­a­tion includ­ing Con­struc­tion Meth­od Statement.

Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment Meth­od for res­tor­a­tion of exist­ing track and form­a­tion of new track are the same.

• Exist­ing sur­face to be stripped down to the form­a­tion level. Stripped turfs/​vegetation to be retained
• Ter­ram geo­tex­tile mem­brane to be laid on level surface.
• Graded loc­al quarry mater­i­al (max 100mm) added to a depth of 300mm and com­pacted. Pre­vi­ous track repair work has used mater­i­al from RSPB’s on-site quarry at Dell of Kil­liehuntly Farm which, if graded, provides good qual­ity mater­i­al for track work. This is the pre­ferred option because (a) it is very loc­al mater­i­al (b) it cuts trans­port­a­tion and car­bon emis­sion costs © it reduces fin­an­cial costs. The altern­at­ive would be import­ing mater­i­al from Alvie Quarry
• As with pre­vi­ous track repair works, quarry mater­i­al will, as far as pos­sible, be depos­ited straight onto the line of the track and lev­elled imme­di­ately to avoid any need for stor­age. If small tem­por­ary stor­age piles are required, these will be lim­ited to (a) exist­ing track — the pre­ferred option (b) drier, firmer ter­rain adja­cent to the line of the track and onto ter­ram mat­ting. Any such tem­por­ary piles will be com­pletely cleared at the com­ple­tion of the job.
• Non-tracked vehicles: Due to the soft, marshy ter­rain and the nearby pres­ence of import­ant fen veget­a­tion, non-tracked vehicles will be restric­ted to (a) exist­ing track (b) new track © areas of drier, firmer terrain.
• No fine sur­face lay­er is used because the site is liable to flood­ing and this could lead to pol­lu­tion of loc­al water
• Pre­vi­ous track res­tor­a­tion by this meth­od and using the same mater­i­als has not res­ul­ted in any silt run-off
• Track pro­file to be cambered to allow water run-off
• Once quarry mater­i­al is laid and com­pacted, retained turfs/​vegetation will be laid along the track edges to allow con­sol­id­a­tion through root­ing and soften the edges visually
• Sea­son­al tim­ing of works: work only to be car­ried out between August and March to avoid the bird breed­ing sea­son. Reg­u­lar bird sur­veys are car­ried out in this area but addi­tion­ally in 2021 an RSPB Cur­lew Pro­ject Officer will be car­ry­ing out more intens­ive stud­ies on curlew
• nests and chicks. The start of track work would be delayed if late nests and/​or chicks were found in the vicin­ity of the pro­posed works
• Tim­ing of works dur­ing the day: work to start at least one hour after dawn and stop at least one hour before dusk to pre­vent poten­tial dis­turb­ance to otters which are known to occur on site, although there are no known otter holts in the vicin­ity of the pro­posed works
• Work to be hal­ted dur­ing very wet weath­er to avoid (a) increased ground dam­age by machinery (b) poten­tial run-off of soil/​silt
• Work will be super­vised by Pete Moore, RSPB Warden, Insh Marshes
• Pho­tos below show examples of pre­vi­ously ren­ov­ated track at RSPB Insh Marshes using the meth­od described here.

Sup­ple­ment­ary inform­a­tion Three loc­al con­tract­ors were con­sul­ted before a final track spe­cific­a­tion was drawn up: Duncan Grant, Glen­fe­sh­ie. Duncan has pre­vi­ous loc­al exper­i­ence of flood­plain track-work and his com­ments relat­ing to poten­tial flood dam­age were very help­ful. Neil Reid, Kin­gussie Mark Hed­der­wick (Hitrak Ltd), Beauly

Pho­to­graphs of site The first three pho­tos show that veget­a­tion along the west­ern half of the pro­posed track route is rush pas­ture and not import­ant fen vegetation.

1. Look­ing west towards west­ern end of pro­posed line of track. River wall to right.

2. Pro­posed line of track look­ing east. River wall to left

3. Pro­posed line of track look­ing east. River wall to left

4. Look­ing towards east­ern end of pro­posed track route where it will link up with the exist­ing track, seen in the middle dis­tance. This half of the pro­posed route was chosen dur­ing an on-site meet­ing with NatureScot staff – Anne Elli­ott (loc­al officer) and Debbie Spray (Wet­land Eco­lo­gist) — because it is high­er, drier, grassy veget­a­tion as opposed to fen vegetation.

5. East­ern end of pro­posed track route where it will link in with exist­ing track.