Paper 1 Fire management consultation

Fire man­age­ment consultation

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Sea­son­al ranger look­ing out over Uath Lochans Park Authority

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1. Set­ting the scene…3 1.1 Introduction3 1.2 Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan4 1.3 Cli­mate projections..4 1.4 Cur­rent approach to recre­ation­al fire management.5 1.5 Recre­ation­al fire man­age­ment in oth­er countries.5 1.6 Fire statistics.7 1.7 Cur­rent legislation7 1.8 Pre­scribed burning8 1.9 Byelaw legislation9

2. Poten­tial options10 2.1 Option 1 – enhanced com­mu­nic­a­tion and edu­ca­tion approach10 2.2 Option 2 – high fire risk byelaw11 2.3 Option 3 – year round byelaw.13

3. Con­sulta­tion questions..15

4. Next steps16

5. Appendix 1 – Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice out­door fire incid­ents in the Nation­al Park…17 5.1 Annu­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires17 5.2 Sea­son­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires.18 5.3 Monthly dis­tri­bu­tion of fires..18 5.4 Geo­graph­ic­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires by loc­al author­ity area19 5.5 Oth­er fire char­ac­ter­ist­ics / motive19 5.6 Causes of primary fires…..20 5.7 Fire stat­ist­ics col­lec­ted by Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice in 2023.20

6. Appendix 2 – draft byelaw for option 2 (high fire risk)23

7. Appendix 3 – draft byelaw for option 3 (year-round fire management)26

8. Appendix 4 – draft byelaw sec­tion with pre­scrip­tion burn­ing exempted.30

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1. Set­ting the scene

1.1 Intro­duc­tion Wild­fire risk and poten­tial impact is increas­ing in Scot­land, with cli­mate mod­el­ling show­ing a pre­dicted increase in drought peri­ods and changes in land use also adding in some places to the amount of com­bust­ible mater­i­al. Wild­fire risk and poten­tial impact has been increas­ing in the Nation­al Park and there is a need to con­sider all poten­tial solu­tions to redu­cing risk and pro­tect people, nature and property.

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is home to 25% of the UK’s rare and endangered spe­cies and around half of Scotland’s ancient pine­woods. It is home to 18,000 people and around two mil­lion people vis­it the area each year. A sig­ni­fic­ant wild­fire in the Nation­al Park could have dev­ast­at­ing con­sequences for the area’s envir­on­ment, com­munit­ies and economy.

This con­sulta­tion is about wheth­er intro­du­cing fire man­age­ment byelaws, which would restrict when fires may be lit in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, is a neces­sary tool to reduce the risk of wild­fires being ignited in the area, and/​or wheth­er the Park Author­ity should enhance its cur­rent com­mu­nic­a­tion and edu­ca­tion approach. • The risk of a wild­fire is related to the chances of an igni­tion occur­ring. • The impact of a wild­fire that does start is influ­enced by the amount and con­di­tion of com­bust­ible material.

The options in this con­sulta­tion are look­ing at wheth­er byelaws could reduce the risk of igni­tion. Along­side this, the Park Author­ity are look­ing at a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways to address the wider issue of wild­fire in the Nation­al Park.

This con­sulta­tion is being taken for­ward in part due to the feed­back the Park Author­ity received from vari­ous com­munit­ies, organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als across the Nation­al Park fol­low­ing the long dry spell in early sum­mer 2023, all of whom wanted to see work pro­gress to reduce wild­fire risk. It fol­lows con­cerns that poten­tially dan­ger­ous fires were still being lit des­pite sig­ni­fic­ant efforts by the Park Author­ity, Police Scot­land and oth­er agen­cies to curb irre­spons­ible beha­viour, through edu­ca­tion ini­ti­at­ives and dir­ect requests.

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In 2023 there were a num­ber of incid­ents in the Nation­al Park (see appendix 1 on fire stat­ist­ics) and there were large wild­fires just out­side the Nation­al Park at Dav­i­ot and Can­nich in the Highlands.

The Park Author­ity board dis­cussed this issue twice in 2023 but, import­antly, the Park Author­ity are not put­ting for­ward a pre­ferred option as part of this pro­cess. Instead, we are keen to gath­er evid­ence and opin­ions from a range of dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives to inform our long-term decision-mak­ing. We really want to hear your views.

1.2 Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan The Park Author­ity has already com­mit­ted in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan to estab­lish an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan for the Nation­al Park. Pre­par­a­tion of this plan will be led by our Land Man­age­ment team and work has already star­ted. The pur­pose of the Man­age­ment Plan is to increase the abil­ity of land man­agers across the Nation­al Park to:

a) Min­im­ise the risk of wild­fires start­ing. b) Respond effect­ively to wild­fires that do start. c) Reduce the impact of any wild­fires in a chan­ging landscape.

The Man­age­ment Plan is being developed in par­al­lel with this con­sulta­tion. Any byelaws taken for­ward would be part of the first sec­tion of the Man­age­ment Plan – min­im­ising the risk of wild­fires start­ing. The Man­age­ment Plan will be drawn up and delivered wheth­er or not any byelaws are imple­men­ted. Part of the pur­pose of this con­sulta­tion is to ask for views on wheth­er byelaws are neces­sary to help rein­force the effect­ive­ness of an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan.

1.3 Cli­mate pro­jec­tions The Park Author­ity com­mis­sioned the James Hut­ton Insti­tute (JHI) to provide a report for the Nation­al Park based on the nation­al scale assess­ment of Scotland’s cli­mate trends, future pro­jec­tions and extremes. The pur­pose of the report is to present a series of maps illus­trat­ing how the cli­mate in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park has changed since 1960 and how it is pro­jec­ted to change in the future based on four dif­fer­ent plaus­ible scenarios.

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The report presents inform­a­tion for the mean monthly val­ues for basic cli­mate vari­ables (pre­cip­it­a­tion, max­im­um and min­im­um tem­per­at­ure) and the amount of a ref­er­ence evapo­tran­spir­a­tion and cli­mat­ic water bal­ance (pre­cip­it­a­tion – evapo­tran­spir­a­tion) as an indic­at­or of poten­tial changes in water availability.

Also presen­ted are three indic­at­ors of cli­mate extremes: the num­ber of con­sec­ut­ive dry days, total num­ber of dry days and heavy rain days. The aim is to provide inform­a­tion about how the cli­mate has already changed and is likely to change fur­ther in the future, to aid plan­ning for resi­li­ence and adapt­a­tion includ­ing wild­fire management.

Click here to down­load the full James Hut­ton Insti­tute report.

1.4 Cur­rent approach to recre­ation­al fire man­age­ment 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. Many land man­agers will do this through erec­tion of site sig­nage and face-to- face engage­ment with vis­it­ors using their own ranger ser­vices or oth­er estate staff such as site war­dens, ghil­lies or foresters.

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. In addi­tion to engage­ment-focused patrols, rangers 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, pro­duc­tion of a fires leaf­let that is used by the Park Author­ity rangers and part­ner ranger ser­vices, and the pro­duc­tion of Scot­tish Out­door Access Code com­pli­ant sig­nage about fires that can be used on site by a range of part­ners and landowners.

1.5 Recre­ation­al fire man­age­ment in oth­er coun­tries This sec­tion sets out the approach to recre­ation­al fire man­age­ment in oth­er coun­tries around Europe.

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Nor­way Camp­fires in nature are pro­hib­ited from 15 April to 15 Septem­ber. They are allowed in places where the fire haz­ard is low, such as by the sea or at an approved camp­fire site. In extreme drought, even bar­be­cues, gas burn­ers and camp­ing stoves are pro­hib­ited. If someone lights a camp­fire or bar­be­cue, they are leg­ally respons­ible for ensur­ing that it is safe, that the fire does not spread and that it is com­pletely extin­guished before they leave.

Eng­land and Wales The Coun­tryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW Act) nor­mally gives a pub­lic right of access to land mapped as ​‘open coun­try’ (moun­tain, moor, heath and down) or registered com­mon land. These areas are known as ​‘open access land’.

The CROW Act has a list of gen­er­al restric­tions that lim­it what people using their open access rights may do, unless giv­en per­mis­sion to do some­thing on the list, or the right to do some­thing already exists. Included on this list is light­ing, caus­ing or risk­ing a fire.

Such a pro­vi­sion has led the likes of the Peak Dis­trict Nation­al Park Author­ity to ​‘ban’ bar­be­cues or fires in the open coun­tryside of the Peak Dis­trict. In some areas, these restric­tions may be covered by Pub­lic Space Pro­tec­tion Orders, with fines applicable.

Sweden There are many par­al­lels with the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act and ​‘Alle­mans­rät­ten’, a right that gives every­one the free­dom to roam and explore the beauty of Sweden. Alle­mans­rät­ten states that mak­ing fires is allowed in the Swedish coun­tryside, but only when con­di­tions are safe.

It is recom­men­ded that the pub­lic use exist­ing bar­be­cue areas and fire­places, which can be found in forests, by lakes and along hik­ing trails. Fire bans are issued fre­quently in Sweden dur­ing spring, sum­mer and autumn to pre­vent forest fires. County admin­is­trat­ive boards and the fire bri­gade are behind these bans and it is up to indi­vidu­als to find out when and where these are in force. Most muni­cip­al­it­ies provide inform­a­tion relat­ing to cur­rent fire risk levels.

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Latvia In Latvia the State Forest Ser­vice can intro­duce a forest fire-safe peri­od across the coun­try. In order to reduce the chances of a forest fire start­ing dur­ing this peri­od, a num­ber of import­ant pro­hib­i­tions and restric­tions are estab­lished dur­ing the forest fire- free peri­od. The fol­low­ing are included in a list of activ­it­ies that are pro­hib­ited in forest and swamp ter­rit­or­ies dur­ing these peri­ods: • Cre­at­ing an open flame in the forest and swamp, with the excep­tion of recre­ation­al facil­it­ies that do not allow fire to spread. In recre­ation­al facil­it­ies, the fire place must be extin­guished com­pletely after use. • Car­ry­ing out any type of burn­ing (includ­ing burn­ing of felling residues) without coordin­a­tion with the rel­ev­ant ter­rit­ori­al unit of the State Forest Service.

1.6 Fire stat­ist­ics The Park Author­ity has received inform­a­tion from the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice on fires with­in the Nation­al Park and has included this at appendix 1, along with patrol data about fires from the Park Author­ity ranger ser­vice for 2023.

1.7 Cur­rent legis­la­tion The law con­cern­ing who can light a fire in Scot­land, where and when, and how to man­age annoy­ance and the poten­tial for dam­age or danger, is com­plex. Sev­er­al pieces of legis­la­tion are rel­ev­ant, includ­ing the Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 (as amended in 2003), the Civic Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1982 and the Roads (Scot­land) Act 1984. This com­plex­ity can present com­mu­nic­a­tion chal­lenges and enforce­ment is very dif­fi­cult: pro­sec­u­tions – relat­ing to fires or the issu­ing of fixed pen­alty notices are very rare.

The Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 mod­i­fied the Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 to make clear that the pro­hib­i­tion of fires does not extend to any­thing done by a per­son who is exer­cising access rights. An offence under the Tres­pass (Scot­land) Act 1865 remains in full effect if the per­son is out­with access rights – for instance, for people fish­ing, or in places out­with access rights (eg where crops are sown or growing).

The Scot­tish Out­door Access Code gives the fol­low­ing guid­ance: • Wherever pos­sible, use a stove rather than light an open fire.

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• If you do wish to light an open fire, keep it small, under con­trol, and super­vised – fires that get out of con­trol can cause major dam­age, for which you might be liable. • Remove all traces of an open fire before you leave. • Nev­er light an open fire dur­ing pro­longed dry peri­ods or in areas such as forests, woods, farm­land or on peaty ground, or near to build­ings or in cul­tur­al her­it­age sites where dam­age can be eas­ily caused. • Heed all advice at times of high risk.

The Code also con­tains cor­res­pond­ing advice for land man­agers: • At times of drought, work with your loc­al author­ity (fire ser­vices) to inform people of the high risks involved.

The Nation­al Access For­um provided addi­tion­al guid­ance on light­ing fires and access rights in 2016.

1.8 Pre­scribed burn­ing Pre­scribed burn­ing is a tech­nique under­taken by land man­agers to reduce veget­a­tion for a vari­ety of reas­ons. It can reduce fuel load, thus min­im­ising the impact of wild­fires. Pre­scribed burn­ing is car­ried out by trained pro­fes­sion­als under con­trolled conditions.

A primary use of pre­scribed burn­ing in the Nation­al Park is muir­burn for grouse man­age­ment. There is cur­rently a code of prac­tice out­lining best prac­tice and the reg­u­la­tion of muir­burn is included in the pro­posed Wild­life Man­age­ment and Muir­burn Bill.

Whilst mit­ig­ated when adher­ing to the code of prac­tice, there remains a risk (whatever the like­li­hood) that pre­scribed burn­ing is the igni­tion point for wild­fire. It is there­fore a con­sid­er­a­tion for poten­tial inclu­sion in some of the byelaw options in this consultation.

Poten­tial byelaw options 2 and 3 (see sec­tion 2) do not impact on pre­scribed burn­ing, includ­ing muir­burn, except dur­ing peri­ods of high fire risk, where it would not be allowed. There is an exemp­tion included in options 2 and 3 for pre­scribed burn­ing by a land man­ager to pre­vent a wild­fire from spreading.

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There is a fur­ther option to take all pre­scribed burn­ing out of the poten­tial byelaws entirely; this is illus­trated in appendix 4. This would mean that pre­scribed burn­ing by land man­agers would not be part of any poten­tial byelaws and would be reg­u­lated through the pro­posed muir­burn licencing.

1.9 Byelaw legis­la­tion Sched­ule 2 to the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) 2000 Act provides, at para­graph 9, for the pro­ced­ure to be fol­lowed where the Park Author­ity pro­poses to make byelaws. Sec­tions 202 to 204 of the Loc­al Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1973 will also apply in rela­tion to the pro­posed byelaws. These impose addi­tion­al require­ments in rela­tion to the adop­tion and revoc­a­tion of byelaws.

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1. Poten­tial options This sec­tion sets out three poten­tial options for redu­cing fire risk in the Nation­al Park; how­ever, there will inev­it­ably be oth­er vari­ations of these as well. Import­antly, the Park Author­ity does not have a pref­er­ence of any of these options at this point. It is also worth high­light­ing that even with enforce­ment of any new laws put in place, no legis­la­tion sees 100% com­pli­ance and so none of these options on their own will solve all issues asso­ci­ated with wild­fire risk in the Nation­al Park.

2.1 Option 1 – enhanced com­mu­nic­a­tion and edu­ca­tion approach Import­antly this is not a ​‘do noth­ing’ option. The fire mes­saging that the Park Author­ity and oth­ers issue would need to increase and great­er con­sist­ency of approach would be required. There is already sig­ni­fic­ant sig­nage, leaf­lets and ranger patrols in the Nation­al Park, along with sig­ni­fic­ant com­mu­nic­a­tion mes­saging. This would have to be built on and made more effect­ive in com­batting fire at inap­pro­pri­ate times of the year. There would also be the poten­tial to look at nation­al solu­tions to the issue, includ­ing increased edu­ca­tion through schools, revi­sions to the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code etc.

Issues to con­sider • Ask­ing people to do some­thing vol­un­tar­ily is always prefer­able to leg­al enforce­ment. • The role of Nation­al Park rangers remains to eli­cit vol­un­tary com­pli­ance from vis­it­ors. • Oppor­tun­ity to increase fire man­age­ment train­ing of rangers to help with any out­break of fire with­in the Nation­al Park. • This could be seen as not tack­ling the issue if cur­rent level of fires in the Nation­al Park remains sim­il­ar or increases. • There is already legis­la­tion in place which restricts wild­fires in spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. • SOAC is per­ceived by some as not strong enough in sup­port­ing ​‘no camp­fires’ mes­saging in sens­it­ive parts of the Nation­al Park, as a res­ult both of the nature and cli­mate emer­gen­cies and the fact that its com­plex­ity around fires is dif­fi­cult to com­mu­nic­ate. • The Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 cur­rently has no real sanc­tions against those who do not com­ply. The lim­ited sanc­tion of ​‘loss of access’ that does exist is com­plex to enforce and does little to address the prob­lem at the time.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh • Page 11 of 30 Does this option pro­act­ively address the increas­ing risks of wild­fire and the poten­tially sig­ni­fic­ant impacts of wild­fire to the Cairngorms as set out in the intro­duct­ory sec­tion of this consultation?

Invest­ment needed if taken for­ward • A sig­ni­fic­ant increase in – and coordin­a­tion of – com­mu­nic­a­tion around fire risk is needed at a nation­al level and with land man­agers in the Nation­al Park. • A more con­sist­ent approach is needed by all landown­ers, pub­lic bod­ies and the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice, with key mes­sages agreed around times of high fire risk. • Increased enforce­ment of exist­ing legis­la­tion and pos­sibly changes to its scope and operation.

2.2 Option 2 – high fire risk byelaw This option would see a byelaw developed to ban the light­ing of open fires and bar­be­cues in the Nation­al Park dur­ing times of high fire risk, as determ­ined by the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice. There are exemp­tions with­in the cur­til­age of a private dwell­ing and in a fire­place of a bothy. There is no restric­tion on the use of camp­ing stoves, cook­ers or gas barbecues.

See appendix 2 for spe­cif­ic word­ing for this poten­tial byelaw.

Issues to con­sider • Would require form­al con­sulta­tion, approv­al by Scot­tish Min­is­ters and reg­u­lar review. • Linked dir­ectly to high fire risk and could there­fore reduce chances of fire at times of highest fire risk. • This approach would be sig­ni­fic­antly easi­er for people to under­stand than the cur­rent guid­ance in SOAC and the exist­ing laws that are in place. • Spe­cif­ic mes­sages are linked to risk. This would have a def­in­ite start and end date. • Same rules apply to the gen­er­al pub­lic and those under­tak­ing pre­scribed burn­ing. No per­cep­tion of inconsistency.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh • • • • • • Page 12 of 30 There is a need for every­one to agree when high fire risk starts and when it ends. This approach would not work if some organ­isa­tions go early or oth­ers keep signs up all the time. The Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice would need to take a clear role in determ­in­ing a state of high fire risk and com­mu­nic­ate it effect­ively. Poten­tial to have dif­fer­ent areas of the Nation­al Park in dif­fer­ent fire risk zones, mak­ing mes­saging com­plic­ated, eg Strath­spey in a high fire risk zone but Deeside not. A high fire risk warn­ing may still be in place when loc­al cli­mate con­di­tions, eg heavy rain­fall, have changed, lead­ing to the per­cep­tion that it should not be in place. Com­mu­nic­a­tion could be com­plic­ated as people would need to know when a high fire risk peri­od applies and what the rules are when it does apply. The role of a ranger changes in the Nation­al Park from edu­ca­tion to include an ele­ment of enforce­ment. This could also change the dynam­ic of the Cairngorms fam­ily of ranger ser­vices as some rangers (Park Author­ity) would have enforce­ment powers whilst oth­ers (estate-based) would not. Only rangers dir­ectly employed by the Park Author­ity are leg­ally able to enforce byelaws. Out­with high fire risk peri­ods, pub­lic per­cep­tion may be that all types of fire and bar­be­cue are allowed, which is not the case (see SOAC). Could cause some dis­place­ment – in part to out­side the Nation­al Park but poten­tially also to more secluded areas in the Nation­al Park, where people are less likely to be seen. Identi­fy­ing and tack­ling issues – includ­ing any out-of-con­trol fires – may there­fore become more difficult.

Invest­ment needed if taken for­ward • Pre­par­a­tion. con­sulta­tion and review of byelaws and their enforce­ment. • Sig­nage at Nation­al Park entrances and key loc­a­tions that can be turned on and off. • Major com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­gramme every time there is a high fire risk. • Train­ing for the Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice. • High fire risk noti­fic­a­tion will need to be timely and clear.

This option will still rely on levels of aware­ness and under­stand­ing by the pub­lic around rules and respons­ib­il­it­ies with­in the coun­tryside, and when and where they apply.

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2.3 Option 3 – year round byelaw This option would see a byelaw developed for a year-round ban on light­ing open fires and bar­be­cues. There are exemp­tions with­in the cur­til­age of a private dwell­ing, in a fire­place of a bothy, in a licenced cara­van site or with­in private prop­erty where the landown­er has giv­en con­sent. Landown­ers can also give per­mis­sion for groups under­tak­ing out­door edu­ca­tion etc to have fires out­with high fire risk peri­ods. There is no restric­tion on the use of camp­ing stoves, cook­ers or gas barbecues.

See appendix 3 for spe­cif­ic word­ing for this poten­tial byelaw.

Issues to con­sider • Would require form­al con­sulta­tion, approv­al by Scot­tish Min­is­ters and reg­u­lar review. • Easy to com­mu­nic­ate to the pub­lic and easy to under­stand. • An easy-to-under­stand approach could mean that the need to enforce is reduced. • Con­sist­ent mes­sages are pos­sible across the Nation­al Park. • Could reduce instances of fires at all time of year. Fire risk is not just a sum­mer issue. • Ranger role changes in the Nation­al Park from edu­ca­tion to include an ele­ment of enforce­ment. This could also change the dynam­ic of the Cairngorms fam­ily of ranger ser­vices as some rangers (Park Author­ity) would have enforce­ment powers whilst oth­ers (estate-based) would not. Only rangers dir­ectly employed by the Park Author­ity are leg­ally able to enforce byelaws. • Pub­lic would be required to not light fires at times when land man­agers are still allowed to under­take pre­scribed burn­ing. Poten­tial for the pub­lic to per­ceive this as incon­sist­ent. • Pub­lic would be asked to refrain from light­ing fires and bar­be­cues dur­ing peri­ods when there is min­im­al risk of fire spread­ing. Could be per­ceived as heavy-handed. • Could cause some dis­place­ment – in part to out­side the Nation­al Park but poten­tially also to more secluded areas in the Nation­al Park where people are less likely to be seen. Identi­fy­ing and tack­ling issues – includ­ing any out-of-con­trol fires – may there­fore become more difficult.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Invest­ment needed if taken for­ward • Sig­nage at Nation­al Park entrances and key loc­a­tions. • Major com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­gramme inside and out­side the Nation­al Park. • Train­ing for the Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice. Page 14 of 30

This option will still rely on levels of aware­ness and under­stand­ing by the pub­lic around rules and respons­ib­il­it­ies with­in the coun­tryside, and when and where they apply.

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1. Con­sulta­tion questions
2. Do you think a fire man­age­ment byelaw is part of the solu­tion for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity to tackle wild­fire risk? (Yes / No / Don’t know). Why do you say that?
3. Which of the three options do you think the Park Author­ity should take for­ward (1, 2, 3, some­thing else – please spe­cify in ques­tion 4). Why do you say that?
4. Do you think that pre­scribed burn­ing should be included in a byelaw? (Yes / No / Don’t know). Why do you say that?
5. Is there a dif­fer­ent option that you think the Park Author­ity should con­sider? (Yes / No / Don’t know). Why do you say that?
6. Do you have any fur­ther comments?

There are a range of ways to get involved in the con­sulta­tion: • Online – vis­it cairngorms​.co​.uk/​fires to com­plete our sur­vey. • Phone — call us on 01479 870 535. • Email – email us with your answers at haveyoursay@​cairngorms.​co.​uk. • Post – send your answers to Fire byelaws con­sulta­tion, Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, 14 The Square, Grant­own on Spey, PH26 3HG.

Altern­at­ive formats of this doc­u­ment – includ­ing large print – are also avail­able on request.

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1. Next steps The Park Author­ity board will con­sider next steps in June 2024, tak­ing into account all the inform­a­tion gathered as part of this con­sulta­tion. If it is agreed that a byelaw may be a neces­sary ele­ment of wild­fire man­age­ment activ­it­ies and to pro­ceed with devel­op­ing a byelaw, the final word­ing will be con­sul­ted on for 12 weeks before being sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for their con­sid­er­a­tion and fur­ther consultation.

The earli­est a byelaw would come into place is dur­ing 2025.

If the Park Author­ity decide not to pro­gress with a byelaw, then the enhanced com­mu­nic­a­tion and edu­ca­tion approach will be developed fur­ther for implementation.

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1. Appendix 1 – Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice out­door fire incid­ents in the Nation­al Park The Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice (SFRS) record details of all fire incid­ents atten­ded, includ­ing aspects such as the geo­graph­ic loc­a­tion, type of prop­erty, where it took place, cause, wheth­er the fire was acci­dent­al or delib­er­ate and, for out­door incid­ents, the level of dam­age (meas­ured as area burned). How­ever, it can be very dif­fi­cult to ascer­tain pre­cise details for all aspects – for example, identi­fy­ing the genu­ine motive for an incid­ent so the details recor­ded are based on the pro­fes­sion­al judge­ment of the SFRS officer in charge.

SFRS have provided details of recor­ded out­door incid­ents with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park for the peri­od from 2010 until late 2023. For this pur­pose, out­door incid­ents have been those recor­ded using the SFRS cat­egor­ies of ​‘grass­land, wood­land and crops’, ​‘oth­er out­doors (includ­ing land)’ and ​‘refuse fires’.

5.1 Annu­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires Table 1 – annu­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, 2010 – 23 Year Num­ber of fires 2010 27 2011 31 2012 31 2013 56 2014 30 2015 19 2016 17 2017 25 2018 52 2019 23 2020 43 2021 31 2022 58 2023 49

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5.2 Sea­son­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires Table 2 — sea­son­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, 2010 – 23 Total fires Num­ber (2010−23) of fires 492 Spring fires (Mar to May) 186 Sum­mer fires (Jun to Aug) 208 Autumn fires (Sep to Nov) 66 Winter fires (Dec to Feb) 32

5.3 Monthly dis­tri­bu­tion of fires Table 3 – monthly dis­tri­bu­tion of fires in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, 2010 – 23 Month Num­ber of fires Jan 6 Feb 15 Mar 38 Apr 89 May 59 Jun 74 Jul 92 Aug 42 Sep 30 Oct 15 Nov 21 Dec 11

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5.4 Geo­graph­ic­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires by loc­al author­ity area Table 4 — geo­graph­ic­al dis­tri­bu­tion of fires by loc­al author­ity area, 2010 – 23 Num­ber of Per­cent­age fires of total* Aber­deen­shire 100 20% High­land 366 74% Moray 14 3% Perth and Kinross 12 2% Angus 0 0%

• Does not total 100% due to rounding

5.5 Oth­er fire char­ac­ter­ist­ics / motive Table 5 — oth­er fire char­ac­ter­ist­ics / motive Num­ber of fires Per­cent­age of total Primary fire 53 11% Sec­ond­ary fire 439 89% Fire char­ac­ter­ist­ics Classed as wild­fire* 29 6% Oth­er fire types 463 94% Motive Acci­dent­al 351 71% Delib­er­ate 141 29%

• SFRS class a wild­fire as one res­ult­ing in over 1,000 sqm of burned area

53 fires were classed as primary fires and 439 as sec­ond­ary fires, which are smal­ler and have less impact than primary fires and, in this con­text, would include camp­fires, refuse on fire or bins on fire. Where the fire is recor­ded as a sec­ond­ary fire, SFRS do not record a cause but, in some instances, a fire spreads fur­ther than the ini­tial items that were alight (so a sec­ond­ary fire can become a primary fire).

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5.6 Causes of primary fires Table 6 causes of primary fires Cause Num­ber Per­cent­age of fires of total* Heat source and com­bust­ibles brought togeth­er 16 30% Inten­tion­al burn, out of con­trol (muir­burn, wood­land etc 10 19% break­down of type not avail­able) Over­heat­ing, unknown cause 4 8% Accu­mu­la­tion of flam­mable mater­i­al 2 4% Bon­fire out of con­trol 2 4% Care­less hand­ling – care­less dis­pos­al 2 4% Nat­ur­al occur­rence 2 4% Neg­li­gent use of equip­ment 1 2% Oth­er (sus­pec­ted causes below) 14 Camp­fires 7 13% Dis­carded cigar­ette 1 2% Fallen tree break­ing elec­tri­city cables 1 2% Spark from train 1 2% Not known 4 8%

• Does not total 100% due to rounding

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5.7 Fire stat­ist­ics col­lec­ted by Park Author­ity Ranger Ser­vice in 2023

Fig­ure 1 — num­ber of act­ive fires / fire remains recor­ded by month in 2023 Fig­ure 2 — map show­ing act­ive fires by dens­ity in the Nation­al Park in 2023

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Fig­ure 3 – map show­ing fire remains recor­ded by dens­ity in 2023

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6. Appendix 2 – draft byelaw for option 2 (high fire

risk) Gen­er­al The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, con­sti­tuted under the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000 and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Des­ig­na­tion, Trans­ition­al and Con­sequen­tial Pro­vi­sions (Scot­land) Order 2003, and hav­ing its prin­cip­al offices at 14 The Square, Grant­own-on-Spey, Moray, PH26 3HG (“the Author­ity”), in exer­cise of the powers con­ferred upon it by Para­graph 8 of Sched­ule 2 to the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000 hereby makes the fol­low­ing byelaws:

Cita­tion and applic­a­tion (1) These byelaws may be cited as The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Fire Man­age­ment Byelaws 20XX. (2) These byelaws shall apply only at times of high fire risk as determ­ined by SFRS.

Defin­i­tions and inter­pret­a­tions (3) In these byelaws, the fol­low­ing words, phrases and expres­sions are prin­ted in bold wherever they appear and they have the inter­pret­a­tion and mean­ing hereby assigned to them, respect­ively: a. ​“bar­be­cue” means an appli­ance or rack on which food is cooked out of doors over an open fire and shall include a dis­pos­able bar­be­cue wheth­er man­u­fac­tured as such or oth­er­wise. It shall not include a gas bar­be­cue; b. ​“bothy” means a build­ing of no more than two storeys which- (1) does not have any form of mains elec­tri­city, piped fuel sup­ply, and piped mains water sup­ply; (2) is 100 metres or more from the nearest pub­lic road (with­in the mean­ing of sec­tion 151 of the Roads (Scot­land) Act 1984); and (3) is 100 metres or more from the nearest hab­it­able build­ing; c. ​“cur­til­age” means land which is used for the com­fort­able enjoy­ment of a build­ing and which serves the pur­pose of that build­ing in some neces­sary or reas­on­ably use­ful way; d. ​“dwell­ing­house” means a res­id­en­tial prop­erty, includ­ing a build­ing con­tain­ing one or more flats, or a flat con­tained with­in such a build­ing; e. ​“fire­place” means a struc­ture (includ­ing wood burn­ing stove) that is designed to con­tain a fire and is made of brick, stone, met­al or any oth­er material;

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f. ​“landown­er” means the own­er of any land or build­ing with­in or con­nec­ted to the Nation­al Park; g. ​“licensed”” means hold­ing a val­id licence issued under the Cara­van Sites and Con­trol of Devel­op­ment Act 1960; h. ​“occu­pi­er” means any per­son who is occupy­ing a dwell­ing­house or prop­erty with the con­sent of the landown­er; i. ​“pre­scribed burn­ing” means the inten­tion­al and con­trolled burn­ing of veget­a­tion with­in a spe­cified area to meet spe­cified land man­age­ment object­ives; j. ​“prop­erty” includes both land and built infra­struc­ture; k. ​“SFRS” means the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice estab­lished in terms of the Fire (Scot­land) Act 2005 and its stat­utory suc­cessors; I. ​“ten­ant” means the ten­ant of any land with­in the Nation­al Park leased or let to such ten­ant under a lease of one year or more; Fire (4) It shall be an offence under these byelaws for any per­son without law­ful author­ity to light a fire in the Nation­al Park, or place or throw or let fall a lighted match, fire­work or any oth­er thing so as to be likely to cause a fire unless the fire is wholly con­tained: a. with­in the cur­til­age of a private prop­erty and is under the con­trol of the landown­er, ten­ant or occu­pi­er of the prop­erty so as to safe­guard against dam­age or danger to any per­son, wild­life, build­ing, struc­ture, tree, shrub or veget­a­tion; or b. in a fire­place con­nec­ted with a bothy so as to safe­guard against dam­age or danger to any per­son, wild­life, build­ing, struc­ture, tree, shrub or veget­a­tion. These byelaws shall not pre­vent the use of a camp­ing stove man­u­fac­tured as a camp­ing stove or cook­er, provided it is used in such a man­ner as not to cause danger of or dam­age by fire. Bar­be­cues (5) It shall be an offence under these byelaws for any