LOAF PAPER 1-RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOUR MESSAGING

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 1 of 8

Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Title: Respons­ible beha­viour mes­saging – dogs and ground nest­ing birds

Pre­pared by: Vicky Hilton

1. Intro­duc­tion

One of the most com­mon top­ics that we are asked to give guid­ance on and con­firm appro­pri­ate mes­saging for is regard­ing wild­life dis­turb­ance and respons­ible beha­viour with dogs, spe­cific­ally in the con­text of ground nest­ing birds.

This top­ic has pre­vi­ously been touched on by the LOAF, spe­cific­ally in the con­text of caper­cail­lie. Regard­ing caper­cail­lie a clear stance was taken that in caper­cail­lie breed­ing areas sig­nage could state that dogs should be walked on a lead between 1 April – 31 August.

Cur­rently this is the only situ­ation where we use the more restrict­ive ​‘dogs on leads’ mes­sage, as opposed to ​‘dogs on leads or under close con­trol’ which is the gen­er­al advice for dog walk­ers giv­en in the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC).

A num­ber of oth­er (non-caper­cail­lie) pro­jects around dogs and birds are being developed and addi­tion­ally dis­turb­ance situ­ations involving oth­er ground nest­ing birds occur­ring and we are seek­ing the LOAF’s guid­ance in devel­op­ing clear guid­ance as what mes­sages are appro­pri­ate to apply in which scenarios.

The LOAF is asked to dis­cuss this top­ic and con­firm the appro­pri­ate respons­ible dog beha­viour mes­sages to use when bird breed­ing dis­turb­ance is occur­ring to:

• pro­tec­ted bird species
• oth­er bird species

NB While this paper deals with the top­ic of mes­saging for dog walk­ing on signs, this is one spe­cif­ic ele­ment to ensure respons­ible beha­viour by dog walk­ers in spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. A wider Park Author­ity pro­ject is ongo­ing with part­ners and the dog walk­ing com­munity util­ising and devel­op­ing many oth­er more enga­ging, innov­at­ive and pos­it­ive strategies to com­mu­nic­ate with dog walk­ers and encour­age respons­ible dog walking.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 2 of 8

2. Back­ground and SOAC messaging 2.1 SOAC and dogs

Access rights extend to tak­ing respons­ible access with a dog. SOAC offers the fol­low­ing advice on what is con­sidered to be respons­ible beha­viour for dog walkers:

• Keep­ing their dog on a short lead or close at heel dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son (usu­ally April to July) in areas where there are ground nest­ing birds breed­ing and rear­ing their young such as moor­land, forests, grass­land, loch shores and the seashore.

The NatureScot (Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age) pub­lic­a­tion ​“Tak­ing the Lead, man­aging access with dogs to reduce impacts on land man­age­ment” (2015) provides fur­ther guid­ance for effect­ive mech­an­isms to encour­age respons­ible dog walk­ing and reduce neg­at­ive impacts.

This doc­u­ment includes a para­graph ​“on-lead or off-lead” (p11) which refers to the ​“SOAC recom­mend­a­tion” that dogs should be kept either on a short lead or close at heel in cer­tain situ­ations. It goes on to state:

• “Where spe­cif­ic loc­al issues or the level of access with dogs jus­ti­fies fur­ther inter­ven­tion, requests to keep dogs on-lead should be restric­ted to the min­im­um neces­sary space and time in order to be effective”.

2.2 SOAC and wildlife

Regard­ing the dis­turb­ance of wild­life, SOAC also offers the fol­low­ing advice:

• Do not inten­tion­ally or reck­lessly dis­turb or des­troy plants, eggs, birds and oth­er animals
• Fol­low­ing any agreed inform­a­tion¹ aimed at pre­vent­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dis­turb­ance to pro­tec­ted plants, birds or oth­er anim­als Tak­ing extra care to avoid dis­turb­ing more sens­it­ive birds and anim­als, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing their breed­ing season

¹ Agreed between land man­agers, recre­ation bod­ies and con­ser­va­tion bodies

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 3 of 8

Pro­tec­ted species

Some irre­spons­ible beha­viours towards wild birds, anim­als and plants are an offence under the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act (1981) and the Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions 1994. With regard to these ​“pro­tec­ted” spe­cies SOAC advises:

• You must not inten­tion­ally dis­turb spe­cially pro­tec­ted birds while nest­ing, or their young
• In a small num­ber of areas and for very spe­cif­ic reas­ons, such as to pro­tect a rare plant or bird, you might be asked to fol­low a spe­cif­ic route or to exer­cise your access rights in a spe­cif­ic way.

3. Mes­saging for pro­tec­ted species

“Pro­tec­ted” bird spe­cies (aka ​“sched­ule 1 spe­cies”) are those that are lis­ted in con­ser­va­tion legis­la­tion and as such have leg­al pro­tec­tion from inten­tion­al or reck­less dis­turb­ance dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son or dis­turb­ance of depend­ent young. Pro­tec­ted spe­cies are selec­ted due to their import­ance and vul­ner­ab­il­ity dur­ing the breed­ing season.

Rel­ev­ant birds on the pro­tec­ted spe­cies list² include; Caper­cail­lie, Dot­ter­el, Red-throated diver, Goldeneye, Slavo­ni­an grebe and Greenshank.

There is guid­ance in SOAC (see 2.2 above) that, par­tic­u­larly in the breed­ing sea­son, wild­life should not be dis­turbed, and in the case of pro­tec­ted spe­cies that sig­nage may dir­ect you to exer­cise your access rights in a spe­cif­ic way.

On this basis the LOAF has pre­vi­ously agreed that for the mes­saging around Caper­cail­lie (a pro­tec­ted spe­cies) the mes­sage ​“dogs on leads” (drop­ping the ​“or under close con­trol” ele­ment) could be used.

See Annex 1 for note of pre­vi­ous LOAF discussions

The LOAF is asked to con­firm that when refer­ring to pro­tec­ted ground nest­ing bird spe­cies and where recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance with dogs is a known issue, mes­saging can dir­ect people to exer­cise their access rights by:

² Full pro­tec­ted spe­cies list — Pro­tec­ted spe­cies list — WCA sched­ules 1, 1A, A1, 2, 3 and 4 | NatureScot

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 4 of 8

• Keep­ing dogs on leads
• Keep­ing to paths

As per SOAC guid­ance this mes­saging would only be applied to the min­im­um area and for the min­im­um time (ie the appro­pri­ate bird breed­ing sea­son) necessary.

Examples where we expect these mes­sages may be applied include:

• Dot­ter­el nest­ing areas on Cairngorm Mountain
• Around lochs where goldeneye or oth­er pro­tec­ted water birds are nesting.

4. Mes­saging for oth­er breed­ing birds

The scen­ario also exists where oth­er ground nest­ing birds may also be prone to dis­turb­ance (par­tic­u­larly by dogs) but these birds are not classed as ​“pro­tec­ted spe­cies”. One example of this is the group known as wad­ing birds or ​“waders”, which includes cur­lew, lap­wing, oyster­catch­er, snipe and redshank.

Birds of Con­ser­va­tion Con­cern (the Red list)

Com­monly referred to as the UK Red List for birds, the Birds of Con­ser­va­tion Con­cern list assesses bird pop­u­la­tions in the UK and assigns each to the Red, Amber or Green lists of con­ser­va­tion con­cern. This assess­ment of con­ser­va­tion status is object­ive and based on the most up-to-date sci­entif­ic evid­ence. The Red list is those spe­cies most at risk and of highest con­ser­va­tion concern.

Many of the wader spe­cies, while not classed as pro­tec­ted spe­cies, do appear on the UK Red and Amber lists, sig­ni­fy­ing they are of con­ser­va­tion con­cern (see annex 2 for red list species).

4.1 Pro­pos­al for discussion

a) Stand­ard message

Based on the SOAC guid­ance for respons­ible beha­viour with dogs dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son the stand­ard mes­sages for all oth­er breed­ing ground nest­ing birds would remain as ​‘dogs on short leads or under close con­trol / at heel’.

A new sign is being developed for waders on this basis (see annex 3).

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 5 of 8

b) Spe­cif­ic scenarios

• Where dis­turb­ance by dogs is an ongo­ing issue and the stand­ard mes­sage isn’t prov­ing effect­ive and the spe­cies affected is a Red list spe­cies, then the mes­saging that is used for pro­tec­ted spe­cies ie dogs on leads and stay on paths can be applied.

The applic­a­tion of this mes­saging would be assessed on a case-by-case basis by the access author­ity and the spe­cif­ic area that it applies to agreed and presen­ted on a map sign which would be dis­played on the site. The times­cale for the restric­tions would typ­ic­ally be the breed­ing sea­son as appro­pri­ate to the species.

• Examples where we expect these mes­sages may be applied include:

  • Wader breed­ing areas at busy recre­ation­al sites suf­fer­ing ongo­ing dis­turb­ance eg adja­cent to the car park at Loch Muick.

5. Sum­mary of pro­posed messaging

In rela­tion to ground nest­ing birds and respons­ible dog messaging:

Scen­ario	Mes­sage
Pro­tec­ted birds	Dogs on leads <br/​> Stay on paths
All oth­er breed­ing birds	Dogs on leads or under close control
Red list species	1. Dogs on leads or under close con­trol <br/​> 2. Case by case assess­ment to apply: Dogs on leads / stay on paths

The LOAF is asked to dis­cuss the above pro­pos­al and the ele­ments of:

• when is it is appro­pri­ate to use ​“dogs on leads” rather than ​“dogs on leads or under close control”.
• If (and if so, when) it is appro­pri­ate to state ​“stay on paths”

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 6 of 8

Annex 1

Pre­vi­ous LOAF dis­cus­sions related to pro­tec­ted (sched­ule 1 spe­cies) and dogs on leads

• 2010 — The LOAF group agreed that for pro­tec­ted spe­cies the bird breed­ing sea­son mes­sage ​“keep dogs on leads” could be used, as opposed to the SOAC sug­ges­ted word­ing of ​“on a lead or under close con­trol”. It was agreed that a stronger line should be taken, which needed a clear and con­sist­ent message.

• 2021 — The LOAF group in the con­text of dog walk­er sig­nage for sens­it­ive caper­cail­lie sites in Car­rbridge, con­firmed the pos­i­tion that request­ing dogs be on leads is con­sist­ent with SOAC.

• 2023 – The LOAF group con­firmed the exten­sion of the length of time the ​‘dogs on leads’ mes­sage is used for Caper­cail­lie signs until 31 Aug (pre­vi­ously 15 Aug), in line with the recog­nised breed­ing sea­son and loc­al evidence.

Also noted was that: with regard to oth­er ground nest­ing birds, sig­nage will refer to the breed­ing sea­son as April to end of July. The use of ​“dogs on leads” will also apply to sched­ule one spe­cies of ground nest­ing bird that are sus­cept­ible to dis­turb­ance dur­ing the breed­ing season.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 7 of 8

Annex 2

Birds of Con­ser­va­tion Con­cern (the Red list)

Rel­ev­ant spe­cies to discussion:

	Waders	Moun­tain top / wood­land birds
	Lap­wing	Caper­cail­lie ℗
	Cur­lew	Dot­ter­el ℗
Red list species	Dun­lin	Ptar­mig­an
	Ringed plover	Ring ouzel
	Green­shank ℗
	Green sand­piper ℗
	Oyster­catch­er
Amber list species	Snipe
	Com­mon sandpiper
	Red­shank

℗ indic­ates Pro­tec­ted species

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

LOAF Paper 1 5 March 2025 Page 8 of 8

Annex 3

Wader signs

(Image: A sign fea­tur­ing an illus­tra­tion of a per­son walk­ing a dog on a lead, a wader bird, and text.)

Waders nest on the ground in this area

To help pro­tect them from dis­turb­ance and tramp­ling dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son, please walk your dog on a lead (or at heel)

1 April to 31 July.

(Logo: SCOT­TISH OUT­DOOR ACCESS CODE outdooraccess-scotland.scot) (Logo: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh)