LOAFPaper3_Loch Kinord Access

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 3

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FORUM

Title: Changes to Loc­al Access Guid­ance at Loch Kinord (Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve) in Response to Increased Water Recreation

Pre­pared by: Ewan Lawrie and Gav­in Clark (NatureScot, Tay­side & Grampian)

Pur­pose:

1. To update mem­bers on changes to the loc­al access guidance.
2. To seek endorse­ment of the approach adopted.

Back­ground

The Park Author­ity has a duty to pro­mote the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code. The Access Code says that: Access rights extend to non-motor­ised water-based activ­it­ies, such as canoe­ing, raft­ing, row­ing and sail­ing. Make sure that the river, loch or reser­voir is appro­pri­ate for your activ­ity and the num­bers involved, take care not to inter­fere unreas­on­ably with oth­er interests.

With regard to Nature Reserves the Access Code says: Access rights extend to these places but remem­ber that they are care­fully man­aged for nature con­ser­va­tion and to safe­guard rare anim­als and plants. Take care to avoid dam­aging the site or dis­turb­ing its wild­life, or inter­fer­ing with its man­age­ment or enjoy­ment by oth­ers. Depend­ing on your activ­ity, you might be reques­ted to fol­low a spe­cif­ic route or to avoid exer­cising access rights in a spe­cif­ic area. Fol­low­ing such loc­al guid­ance can help to safe­guard the nat­ur­al her­it­age of these areas.

Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve has had Loc­al Access Guid­ance for water users in place for Loch Kinord and Loch Dav­an since 2009.

In sum­mary, it has asked people not to use Loch Dav­an because of dis­turb­ance to birds. For Loch Kinord vis­it­ors have been asked to pick respons­ible launch points, not to land on the islands, and to avoid get­ting close to the most sens­it­ive breed­ing bird areas.

Due to a sharp rise in water-borne recre­ation and its effects upon breed­ing birds, addi­tion­al restric­tions are now being added ask­ing people not to use Loch Kinord dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son. Even if each indi­vidu­al user behaves well and in line with the cur­rent loc­al access guid­ance, the com­bined effect of their pres­ence may be such that breed­ing birds will be dis­turbed, pos­sibly to the extent that breed­ing fails or they are dis­placed to oth­er sites.

Con­ser­va­tion Interests.

Muir of Din­net is a Site of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest for its Breed­ing Bird and fresh­wa­ter interests it is also a Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area for its non-breed­ing wild­fowl assemblage and a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion for Otter. All wild birds and their nests are pro­tec­ted under the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act, and some spe­cies such as Goldeneye, which is present on the site, are sub­ject to addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion from inten­tion­al or reck­less dis­turb­ance. The

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 3

assemblage of breed­ing birds SSSI fea­ture reg­u­larly includes spe­cies such as great-cres­ted and little grebes, mute swan, water rail, spot­ted crake and sedge warbler, along with wigeon, goosander and goldeneye. In addi­tion, the lochs are also an import­ant feed­ing site for osprey, which nest else­where on Deeside.

Recre­ation­al Pressure

Situ­ated on the edge of the Park in the pop­u­lar tour­ist des­tin­a­tion of Roy­al Deeside the Reserve cur­rently attracts in the vicin­ity of 80,000 vis­it­ors per year. Its loc­a­tion and rel­at­ively easy access, the phys­ic­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the loch and the rel­at­ive scarcity of nearby altern­at­ives make it attract­ive for water sports enthu­si­asts. How­ever until recently num­bers have been rel­at­ively low. The cur­rent num­ber of users var­ies from day to day but spring 2021 saw single organ­ised groups of up to 7 paddle-boards. One group organ­iser who was vis­it­ing the loch has already vol­un­tar­ily stopped, for at least the remainder of the bird breed­ing sea­son, due to his own con­cerns about dis­turb­ance. More recently, up to 16 paddle-boards have been observed at week­ends, as well as vari­ous oth­er craft (canoes, kayaks, small inflat­ables) and ​‘wild swim­mers’. Stand­ing paddle-boarders are also more likely to cause dis­turb­ance (or dis­turb­ance at a great­er dis­tance) because of the taller pro­file com­pared with for example a kayak.

In the past the dis­tance over which craft need to be car­ried from a vehicle has been a lim­it­ing factor on num­bers using the loch. Again, paddle-boards and inflat­ables are light­er and more eas­ily car­ried, so this is now less of a dis­in­cent­ive and may have con­trib­uted to the increase in the num­ber of users.

Loch Kinord is rel­at­ively small (approx. 70ha) and so capa­city is lim­ited. Using pub­lished guid­ance, and an indic­at­ive dis­turb­ance dis­tance of 200m, then even as few as four users (or tight groups of users) could res­ult in dis­turb­ance across almost all of the loch. Cur­rent usage is often much high­er. Recent bird counts under­taken in the early morn­ing are high­er than in the after­noon when people tend to be on the water. Although count data is rel­at­ively crude and col­lec­ted over rel­at­ively short time peri­od, there seems to be a correlation.

Dis­turb­ance on the loch also has to be seen in the con­text of poten­tial dis­turb­ance by vis­it­ors on land, which may exacer­bate the situ­ation e.g. if dogs are not kept under close con­trol and enter the water or the mar­gins, or sig­ni­fic­ant num­bers of vis­it­ors depart from paths and approach the water’s edge. NatureScot who man­age the site are already tak­ing addi­tion­al meas­ures this year to try to encour­age respons­ible beha­viour and reduce dis­turb­ance of this sort. This includes addi­tion­al staff on site to pro­mote good vis­it­or beha­viour, and phys­ic­al meas­ures such as sig­nage and block­ing of desire lines.

Engage­ment

Staff on site have been enga­ging with water users to encour­age respons­ible beha­viour. A press release was issued at the start of April encour­aging users to con­sider going else­where and a note was issued to loc­al stake­hold­ers seek­ing their views on the issue and a pro­pos­al to ask people not to use Loch Kinord dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son. A fol­low up online dis­cus­sion to gath­er views and sug­ges­tions was held on 7 May with rep­res­ent­at­ives of NatureScot, Scot­tish Canoe Asso­ci­ation, Aber­deen Stand Up Paddle boarders, Din­net & Kinord Estate, Mid-Deeside Com­munity Coun­cil, RSPB and the Access Officer from CNPA.

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 3

Altern­at­ives to restric­tions dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son which were dis­cussed were: zon­a­tion, a per­mit scheme, and water-borne vol­un­tary ran­ger­ing. NatureScot’s view is that the rel­at­ively small size of the loch would make it imprac­tic­al to oper­ate zones on the loch. The pla­cing of zone mark­er buoys would also change the char­ac­ter of the loch and might per­versely attract water users. Poli­cing of a per­mit sys­tem for water-borne recre­ation is con­sidered likely only to be pos­sible under byelaws. On the water ran­ger­ing by volun­teers would raise vari­ous issues includ­ing one of respons­ib­il­ity for their health and safety. It is also prob­able that once people are on the water it is likely to be even more dif­fi­cult to influ­ence their beha­viour. NatureScot has the power to cre­ate byelaws on NNRs. How­ever this is admin­is­trat­ively com­plic­ated and would be dif­fi­cult to enforce in these circumstances.

The mes­sage con­veyed in April to ​‘go some­where else if busy’ has not brought about a notice­able change in the num­ber of people tak­ing access onto the loch. The mes­sage is prob­ably not suf­fi­ciently clear, and for many the concept of ​‘busy’ would be far bey­ond the level of access where dis­turb­ance to birds has occurred. Fur­ther­more, to be effect­ive, a clear mes­sage needs to be com­mu­nic­ated to poten­tial users before they reach the site.

Some stake­hold­ers have reques­ted that there be no access on the water at any time of year. We do not cur­rently believe that levels of use dur­ing winter months will be sig­ni­fic­ant, mainly due to the colder weath­er. Thus we do not con­sider mean­time that a year-round restric­tion is jus­ti­fi­able. How­ever the loch’s pro­tec­ted (SPA) fea­tures do include win­ter­ing birds, so this will be mon­itored and kept under review.

Response

A part of the site’s role as a Nation­al Nature Reserve is to pro­mote pub­lic enjoy­ment of the out­doors and thus to strike a bal­ance between the nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally import­ant con­ser­va­tion interests with respons­ible access. NatureScot’s view is that there is a sig­ni­fic­ant risk that dis­turb­ance will adversely affect the breed­ing birds on the site. In order to reduce this dis­turb­ance, NatureScot is put­ting in place new loc­al access guid­ance ask­ing people not to take access on the water of Loch Kinord dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son, I March to 31 August. This policy is sim­il­ar to the approach NatureScot have adop­ted for land-based vis­it­ors to the Reserve for example ask­ing them not to light fires and to keep dogs on leads. Mon­it­or­ing will con­tin­ue both of the bird num­bers and of vis­it­or num­bers and beha­viour. The policy will be kept under ongo­ing review and will be sub­ject to more form­al review as part of the pro­duc­tion of the next Reserve man­age­ment plan in 2024. This will be mind­ful of evolving cir­cum­stances includ­ing devel­op­ing pat­terns of recre­ation and tour­ism as we con­tin­ue to emerge from COV­ID, and wider recre­ation­al fashions/​trends (the cur­rent paddle­board boom may or may not be sus­tained). The policy will remain open to altern­at­ive approaches and NatureScot will con­tin­ue to engage with user groups.

The revised guid­ance will be pro­moted by loc­al staff, the erec­tion of appro­pri­ate signs and a revi­sion to the water user access leaf­let. Because it is import­ant to inform people before they arrive at the site, the changes will be com­mu­nic­ated online through NatureScot’s own online mater­i­al and through dis­cus­sion with stakeholders.

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 3

NatureScot are keen not to con­strain people’s enjoy­ment of the nat­ur­al her­it­age how­ever we believe that reas­on­able steps are required to arrive at a bal­anced approach to pro­tect the things which make the site spe­cial. By chan­ging the loc­al access guid­ance we are tech­nic­ally nar­row­ing the defin­i­tion of what counts as respons­ible access. While in the­ory this strengthens the land manager’s leg­al pos­i­tion; prac­tic­ally we don’t anti­cip­ate a dif­fer­ence oth­er than in extreme cases, which would in any case be under­pinned by the Wild­life & Coun­tryside Act offence of reck­less dis­turb­ance. We anti­cip­ate the main effect of revised guid­ance will be to sim­pli­fy the mes­sage and strengthen our pos­i­tion when seek­ing to influ­ence visitors.