Paper 1 Loch Kinord water access

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 1

Title: Update On Water Borne Access at Loch Kinord, Muir of Din­net NNR

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

Pur­pose:

1. To provide a brief end of sea­son update and;
2. To seek advice on con­sulta­tion on future approach and action on the issue.

We would par­tic­u­larly wel­come com­ments and advice from the LOAF on the stake hold­ers and methodology

Back­ground:

In response to a large increase in vis­it­or num­bers tak­ing water borne access to Loch Kinord (Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve), changes to the type of use, and increased dis­turb­ance to wild­life, NatureScot worked with stake­hold­ers to devel­op revised loc­al guid­ance on respons­ible access dur­ing sum­mer 2021 (effect­ive from 16 June). A paper giv­ing more inform­a­tion on the changes and the rationale Changes to Loc­al Access Guid­ance at Loch Kinord (Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve) in Response to Increased Water Recre­ation was sub­mit­ted to the LOAF meet­ing on 23 June 2021. At the same meet­ing the Loc­al Access Officer sub­mit­ted a paper on a Park wide approach and frame­work for spe­cif­ic site advice Water Borne Access and Sens­it­ive Spe­cies.

Pri­or to June, an ini­tial approach of ask­ing vis­it­ors not to use loch if it was busy proved to be inef­fect­ive as the gen­er­al per­cep­tion of what busy meant was vari­able but was often above levels which NatureScot per­ceived to be caus­ing dis­turb­ance. A clear­er mes­sage ask­ing people not to take access on the water of Loch Kinord dur­ing the bird breed­ing sea­son, (1 March to 31 August) was there­fore adop­ted. This mes­sage was pro­moted through con­tacts with the stake­hold­er group that had been estab­lished to dis­cuss the issue, a press release, sig­nage on-site and face to face dis­cus­sions with the pub­lic on-site.

Par­tic­u­larly because the changes were imple­men­ted rel­at­ively quickly to pro­tect the con­ser­va­tion interests of the site; NatureScot under­took to review the oper­a­tion of the changes fol­low­ing the 2021 sea­son and pri­or to any decision over 2022 or sub­sequent seasons.

The revised Loc­al Access Guid­ance (2021) in prac­tice In gen­er­al vis­it­ors fol­lowed the request not to use the loch for water-sports: com­pli­ance was good. NatureScot received one form­al com­plaint mainly regard­ing impacts on open water swim­ming. We also received sev­er­al writ­ten mes­sages of sup­port. Even amongst the paddle-board com­munity, views were mixed. One com­mer­cial pro­vider had vol­un­tar­ily ceased com­ing to Loch Kinord pri­or to our change of pos­i­tion, because of his own con­cerns. But the oper­at­or of an Aber­deen SUP web­site called our decision ​“heavy-handed”. Pri­or to the change of guid­ance mid-June, bird counts were high­er at times when there were no or very few people on the water, com­pared with counts car­ried out when water-users were present. More detailed inform­a­tion on these find­ings and the meth­od­o­lo­gies will be provided as part of the con­sulta­tion process.

Although the meth­od­o­logy was rel­at­ively crude, the counts did show a change fol­low­ing intro­duc­tion of the revised guid­ance on water-borne access after mid-June. Sum­mary data is included at Annex A.

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 1

The gen­er­al trend shown that more birds were present on the loch when water-sports were absent or at a low level was sup­por­ted by gen­er­al obser­va­tions of Reserve staff. How­ever it is also pos­sible that the change mid-June was too late to bene­fit all spe­cies. For example only 2 broods of Goldeneye were seen on the loch this sum­mer, com­pared with 6 – 12 in recent years. How­ever oth­er factors may also have con­trib­uted to this decline.

Pro­posed Review and Consultation

The Park frame­work for site spe­cif­ic advice, as presen­ted in June, above, iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing issues:

• Is the loch designated
• Are the spe­cies affected on Sched­ule 1 of the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1984 (as amended), which provides a list of spe­cies that are gran­ted spe­cial pro­tec­tion from disturbance?
• Is there a mon­it­or­ing frame­work in place to determ­ine how pop­u­lar the loch is for water borne access?
• Is there strong evid­ence over time of impact on breed­ing, roost­ing and feed­ing success?
• Have altern­at­ive approaches to vis­it­or man­age­ment been tested such as on site guid­ance and edu­ca­tion, buoys, zon­ing or increased ranger presence?
• Are there suit­able altern­at­ive loc­a­tions nearby?
• Can water borne access be facil­it­ated at a man­age­able location?

The above frame­work can provide a basis for the forth­com­ing con­sulta­tion aimed at con­sid­er­ing if it is reas­on­able and/​or neces­sary to con­tin­ue with the loc­al access guid­ance in its 2021 form or what changes to the guid­ance and mon­it­or­ing which under­pins it might be justified.

As set out in the pre­vi­ous paper, Loch Kinord forms part of nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally import­ant des­ig­nated areas. While the back­ground to these des­ig­na­tions will be provided as con­text it is not envis­aged that they will form part of the consultation.

A list of Sched­ule 1 spe­cies will also be provided as part of the consultation.

Views will be sought from stake­hold­ers about the mon­it­or­ing of vis­it­or use and what altern­at­ive or addi­tion­al mon­it­or­ing could reas­on­ably and use­fully be car­ried out and how this could feed into a more stra­tegic approach.

Advice will be sought from spe­cial­ists and stake­hold­ers on the out­come of the dis­turb­ance mon­it­or­ing which was car­ried out in 2021 and how robust the evid­ence that it provides is. Any issues such as uncer­tainty over impacts from dif­fer­ent types of water-sport use will also be explored and sug­ges­tions for any changes considered.

Influ­en­cing vis­it­or beha­viour was through aware­ness rais­ing and in par­tic­u­lar through off-site pub­li­city, on-site sig­nage and increased inter­ac­tion with Reserve staff. The unsuit­ab­il­ity of oth­er mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures, such as zon­ing, was based on the phys­ic­al size of the loch, inef­fect­ive­ness of the pre­vi­ous mes­sages, and the avail­able resources. Such altern­at­ive meas­ures will be revis­ited with stakeholders.

There are 447 sites lis­ted in Aber­deen­shire on the stand­ing waters data­base; the major­ity of these will be unsuit­able for water-borne recre­ation due to size or oth­er con­straints. There are 14 loc­a­tions lis­ted on the ​‘SUP Aber­deen’ web­site (includ­ing coastal). The review will seek stake­hold­er input on poten­tial altern­at­ive pro­vi­sion and try to identi­fy some com­mon issues where there are constraints.

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL ACCESS FOR­UM PAPER 1

While not part of the cri­ter­ia above we anti­cip­ate also gath­er­ing inform­a­tion on impacts of water borne access on the char­ac­ter of the site and oth­er users’ enjoy­ment, and this will be included in the review.

Stake­hold­ers and Methodology

The con­sulta­tion under­taken in spring 2021 was rel­at­ively brief and lim­ited in extent. Some gaps have been high­lighted which we intend to address. An ini­tial list of poten­tial stake­hold­ers is included at Annex B

It is pro­posed to draft a report on 2021 cov­er­ing the points above to form the basis for much of the con­sulta­tion. Expert input will be sought on tech­nic­al aspects. We envis­age cir­cu­lat­ing the report togeth­er with a struc­tured ques­tion­naire either as an email or anoth­er elec­tron­ic form such as Sur­vey­mon­key. Fol­lowed up with a plen­ary meet­ing to dis­cuss the feed­back and to gath­er any addi­tion­al points pri­or to pro­pos­ing a way for­ward, which we intend to present to the LOAF in Feb­ru­ary 2022, allow­ing adequate time to imple­ment any agreed meas­ures in the spring.

Annex A

Bird Counts Loch Kinord before the 16^th June

	w/​c 22nd March	w/​c 29th March	w/​c 5th April	w/​c 12th April	w/​c 19th April	w/​c 26th April	w/​c 3rd May	w/​c 10th May	w/​c 17th May	w/​c 24th May	w/​c 31 May	w/​c 7th June
Mid­week Count	212	248	117	131	104	72	93	61	84	42	40	38
Week­end Count	184	156	56	24	47	25	30	37	25	13	15	9

Bird Count Loch Kinord 16^th June to 31^st August

	w/​c 14th June	w/​c 21st June	w/​c 28th June	w/​c 5th July	w/​c 12th July	w/​c 19th July	w/​c 26th July	w/​c 2nd August	w/​c 9th August	w/​c 16th August	w/​c 23rd August
Mid­week Count	37	75	190	38	69	154	76	26	25	24	97
Week­end Count	34	138	169	55	168	76	33	33	13	42	41

Annex B

Parties included in Spring 2021 stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion	Addi­tion­al parties or organ­isa­tions to be con­sul­ted Winter 2021⁄22
Aquaplay (water-sport provider)	Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil (Access Author­ity in rela­tion to oth­er recre­ation sites)
CNPA (Access Authority)	Brit­ish SUP Assoc
Din­net & Kinord Estate (landown­er)	Scot­tish Swimming
Mid-Deeside Com­munity Council	Triath­lon Scotland
RSPB	10 (approx.) private indi­vidu­als who made rep­res­ent­a­tions for/​against in 2021
Scot­tish Canoe Association
Scot­tish Land & Estates
SUP Aber­deen (website/​group organiser
2 x private indi­vidu­al (res­id­ents)