Paper 2 - Integrated wildfire management plan

For decision

Title: Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan

Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Management

Pur­pose

This Board Paper presents a final ver­sion of the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to:

a) Approve the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan.

Stra­tegic context

1. Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan sec­tion A7. Fire Man­age­ment con­tains an action to devel­op an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan (IWMP) by 2027.

Back­ground

1. The pro­longed dry spell in late winter and spring of this year has emphas­ised the import­ance of integ­rat­ing wild­fire pre­ven­tion and mit­ig­a­tion in all land man­age­ment plan­ning in the Cairngorms. The devel­op­ment of an Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan is an action in Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP4) and a draft was dis­cussed by the Board on 14 Feb­ru­ary and approved for wider con­sulta­tion. The Plan aims to help land man­agers pre­vent wild­fires from start­ing, respond effect­ively to wild­fires that do start and to increase wild­fire resi­li­ence in the land­scape. The Plan also con­siders the pro­tec­tion of communities.

2. The con­sulta­tion ran from 24 Feb­ru­ary to 04 April, and 15 responses were received from a range of organ­isa­tions, land man­agers and inter­ested indi­vidu­als. All com­ments were con­sidered and the draft amended where it was thought appro­pri­ate. Many con­sul­tees appre­ci­ated the increased pro­file giv­en to wild­fire issues by the Park Author­ity. Many also argued that wild­fire issues needed to be addressed nation­ally and not just region­ally. Numer­ous spe­cif­ic points were raised around the draft IWMP includ­ing points about muir­burn, train­ing for wild­fire, wild­fire plans for land­hold­ings, the man­age­ment of camp­fires and barbeques, land­hold­ings with no per­man­ent staff and the risk of crown fires. How­ever most com­ments reflec­ted dif­fer­ent opin­ions on how land should be man­aged for wild­fire, with some advoc­at­ing the need for increased inter­ven­tion in the man­age­ment of fuel loads and oth­ers emphas­ising that eco­lo­gic­al res­tor­a­tion would increase wild­fire resi­li­ence over time.

3. A key aim of the Integ­rated Wild­fire Man­age­ment Plan is to pro­mote col­lab­or­a­tion between all land man­agers around the wild­fire issue. The con­tinu­ation of the long- held cul­ture of mutu­al aid between all land­hold­ings will be cru­cial in com­bat­ing the threat of wild­fire as the cli­mate changes. The Plan there­fore does not seek to change anyone’s land man­age­ment object­ives but encour­ages land man­agers to work togeth­er and to con­sider wild­fire in all aspects of their land man­age­ment planning.

Implic­a­tions

1. A resource alloc­a­tion of £75,000 to deliv­er wild­fire and respons­ible beha­viour sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions is included in the oper­a­tion­al plan budget. There is suf­fi­cient staff resource alloc­ated in the oper­a­tion­al plan to sup­port patrolling and com­mu­nic­a­tions by the Park Author­ity ranger service.

2. The imple­ment­a­tion of the plan will be mon­itored by the Cairngorms Upland Advis­ory Group with updates to the Park Author­ity Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee on an annu­al basis.

Colin McCle­an

09 June 2025

colinmcclean@​cairngorms.​co.​uk