Paper 3 Managing for Visitors

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FORUM

Title: Man­aging for Vis­it­ors in 2022

Pre­pared by: Adam Streeter-Smith- Recre­ation and Access Manager

Pur­pose: To update members

Back­ground

1. The sum­mers of 2020 and 2021 were unpre­ced­en­ted in rela­tion to vis­it­or man­age­ment with the com­bin­a­tion of lock­down eas­ing and the desire from vis­it­ors to exper­i­ence pop­u­lar loc­a­tions in the Park. This led to a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in vis­it­or pres­sures at key loc­a­tions. The response from the Park Author­ity and its Part­ners was the devel­op­ment of Man­aging for Vis­it­or Plans, deploy­ment of rangers and invest­ment in infrastructure.

2. The CNPA and its part­ners are con­tinu­ing this work with­in the nation­al vis­it­or man­age­ment frame­work and the #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er frame­work to deliv­er a Park wide vis­it­or man­age­ment plan that dove­tails and sup­ports site based vis­it­or man­age­ment plans and estate man­age­ment objectives.

3. Annex I sets out the agreed Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Plan for 2022. Like the pre­vi­ous ones the plans object­ives is to:

• Provide a warm wel­come and sup­port excep­tion­al exper­i­ences for the pub­lic to enjoy the outdoors:
• Mit­ig­ate any neg­at­ive impacts from increased recre­ation in sens­it­ive or pop­u­lar sites:
• Reduce poten­tial con­flict between res­id­ents and visitors:
• Pro­mote col­lab­or­a­tion across estate and organ­isa­tion­al bound­ar­ies ensur­ing a pos­it­ive vis­it­or experience.

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Annex I CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Plan: 2022 Season

Back­ground and Stra­tegic Context

1. The sum­mers of 2020 and 2021 were unpre­ced­en­ted in terms of changes to vis­it­or beha­viour and dis­tri­bu­tion in the Park. A com­bin­a­tion of cir­cum­stances, includ­ing the eas­ing of lock­down and the desire of vis­it­ors to exper­i­ence the out­doors and nature, put sig­ni­fic­ant new pres­sures on cer­tain loc­a­tions in the Park.

2. New arrange­ments for the man­aging for vis­it­ors were put in place with part­ners dur­ing this time. These arrange­ments have been com­pre­hens­ively reviewed by the CNPA Board in Decem­ber 2021 papers are avail­able at https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​s​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​/​b​o​a​r​d​-2021 – 11-26/

3. Look­ing for­wards, the CNPA is com­mit­ted to work­ing with part­ners as part of the nation­al vis­it­or man­age­ment frame­work to deliv­er high-qual­ity vis­it­or exper­i­ences with­in the Park. In late 2021 the CNPA con­sul­ted on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (2023−2028). The con­sulta­tion promp­ted a record level of pub­lic response and the feed­back will be ana­lysed care­fully. The mod­i­fied Plan will be approved by the CNPA Board and then signed off by Scot­tish Min­is­ters in June 2022. The draft Plan included sev­er­al object­ives relat­ing to vis­it­or man­age­ment includ­ing that lis­ted below:

>Draft NPPP Object­ive C4: Work closely with part­ners across the Nation­al Park to man­age the impact of vis­it­ors and provide a high-qual­ity exper­i­ence. Ensure pub­lic infra­struc­ture is of a high stand­ard, able to cope with demand at key des­tin­a­tions, and con­sider how to best util­ise areas of the Nation­al Park with capa­city for increased vis­it­or numbers.

1. Dur­ing 2022, fur­ther work will be under­taken on a num­ber of action plans includ­ing the Tour­ism Action Plan, Stra­tegic Infra­struc­ture Plan and Act­ive Cairngorms (cov­er­ing out­door access, act­ive travel, health, volun­teer­ing and the man­age­ment for vis­it­ors). In the mean­time the region­al vis­it­or man­age­ment plans that were developed in 2020 have been reviewed based on the feed­back received dur­ing 2021.

Object­ives

1. The object­ives for the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Plan are to:

• Provide a warm wel­come and sup­port excep­tion­al exper­i­ences for the pub­lic to enjoy the outdoors.
• Mit­ig­ate any neg­at­ive impacts from increased recre­ation in sens­it­ive or pop­u­lar sites.
• Reduce poten­tial con­flict between res­id­ents and visitors.
• Secure the con­fid­ence of the Park’s com­munit­ies that the Park’s spe­cial qual­it­ies are being well- man­aged and cared for.
• Pro­mote col­lab­or­a­tion across estate and organ­isa­tion­al bound­ar­ies ensur­ing a pos­it­ive vis­it­or experience.

Key Part­ners

1. Col­lab­or­a­tion with part­ners is key to the suc­cess­ful deliv­ery of these object­ives. At a region­al level the key part­ners to CNPA are:

• Loc­al Authorities
• Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership

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• Part­ner Ranger Services
• Land Man­agers
• Owners/​managers of key vis­it­or sites
• Police Scot­land
• NatureScot
• Scot­tish Fire and Rescue
• Volun­teer Rangers

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

1. The work with part­ners will be facil­it­ated by advice from the fol­low­ing partnership/​advisory groups:

• Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group – meet­ing every two weeks over Easter/​Summer to provide oper­a­tion­al guid­ance, net­work­ing and sup­port to staff under­tak­ing on-the-ground activity.
• Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship (CTP) – meet­ing roughly quarterly to focus on review of Tour­ism Action Plan.
• Cairngorms Tour­ism Response Group – meet­ing monthly (as a sub-group of the CTP) to focus on busi­ness, com­mu­nic­a­tion and mar­ket­ing issues.
• Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um – meet­ing roughly quarterly to advise on man­age­ment of out­door access issues.

Focus

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is the largest Nation­al Park in the UK and much of it is remote, moun­tain­ous and rel­at­ively inac­cess­ible. The vast major­ity of vis­it­ors behave very respons­ibly and the man­age­ment issues caused are gen­er­ally loc­al­ised and pre­dict­able. It is unreal­ist­ic and unne­ces­sary to imple­ment all man­age­ment meas­ures equally across the Park, giv­en staff­ing and resources. How­ever, it is essen­tial to imple­ment con­fid­ently and con­sist­ently the clear, simple mes­saging about the import­ance of safe, respons­ible and enjoy­able beha­viour in the Park.

2. The focus of man­aging for vis­it­ors meas­ures will be on the pro­act­ive, safe man­age­ment of key coun­tryside sites sim­pli­fied into two broad areas:-

• Rur­al ​“hot spots”
• Rur­al ​“warm spots”

These are iden­ti­fied in Table 1. A risk rat­ing for each site iden­ti­fied is giv­en as follows:

	Very pop­u­lar, pinch points on trails, could be on a dead end road, lim­ited park­ing and over­spill sites, pop­u­lar hills or beauty spots, heav­ily pro­moted by 3rd parties, close to main trans­port routes i.e. trunk roads and access­ible from large towns.
	Pop­u­lar, park­ing pre­vi­ously suf­fi­cient for level of use, set­ting off point for hills or beauty spots and pro­moted by 3rd parties, likely to exper­i­ence over­spill from nearby pop­u­lar sites.

Table 1- Rur­al ​“Hot­spots” and ​“Warm Spots”

Key Coun­tryside Loc­a­tion	Risk	Man­ager	Roads Author­ity	Onsite sup­port (includ­ing estim­ated FTE coverage)
Muir of Dinnet		NatureScot	Aber­deen­shire	SNH Site Man­ager and Aber­deen­shire Ranger
Cam­bus o May		FLS	Aber­deen­shire	FLS Ranger (0.1)

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Glen Tanar	Glen Tanar Estate/​Char­it­able Trust	Aber­deen­shire	GTCT Ranger Ser­vice (1.4)
Loch Muick	Bal­mor­al Estate	Aber­deen­shire	Bal­mor­al Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Kei­loch Car Park	Inver­cauld Estate	Aber­deen­shire	Staff but no ranger
Linn of Dee	NTS	Aber­deen­shire	NTS Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Glen Clova	FLS / Angus Alive/​NatureScot	Angus	AA Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Glen Mark	Angus Coun­cil and Dal­housie Estates	Angus	CNPA Sea­son­al Ranger
Kil­liecrankie	NTS	Perth and Kinross	NTS Ranger
Beinn a Ghlo (car park)	Lude Estate	Perth & Kinross	No ranger service
Falls of Bruar	Atholl Estate and House of Bruar	Perth and Kinross	Atholl Estates
Glen Fesh­ie (car park)	Achlean Croft	High­land Council	No ranger service
Uath Lochans	FLS	High­land Council	FLS Ranger (0.1)
Fesh­ie Bridge	FLS	High­land Council	FLS Ranger (0.1)
Lag­gan Wolftrax	FLS and Lag­gan Forest Trust	High­land Council	FLS Ranger (0.1) and LFT staff
Loch an Eilien	Rothiemurchus	High­land Council	Rothiemurchus Estate Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Glen­more	FLS	High­land Council	FLS Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Cairngorm Moun­tain	HIE	High­land Council	CM Ranger Ser­vice (2)
Loch Garten	RSPB Scot­land	High­land Council	RSPB Com­munity Ranger and estate staff (0.3)
Glen­liv­et Estate	Crown Estate Scotland	Moray Coun­cil	CES Ranger (0.5)

Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Measures

1. Suc­cess­ful man­age­ment for vis­it­ors is based on good com­mu­nic­a­tion between part­ners, suit­able infra­struc­ture, con­tin­ued pub­lic engage­ment and risk man­age­ment. All of these ele­ments are under- pinned and guided by con­tin­ued mon­it­or­ing and evaluation.

2. Table 2 sets out the key meas­ures to be taken across the Park.

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Table 2 — Meas­ures for Man­aging for Visitors

Meas­ures	Examples
Com­mu­nic­a­tions	Man­aging for Vis­it­ors and Tour­ism Response Groups Col­lab­or­a­tion on #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er cam­paign with CBP and others Tread Lightly cam­paign in the Park Deploy­ment of vari­able mes­sage elec­tron­ic signs Deliv­ery of nation­al cam­paigns at region­al level Devel­op a Park-wide Wild­fire Plan
Wild Fire Prevention
Vis­it­or Infrastructure	Pre­par­a­tion of Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme grants
Pub­lic toilets	Pub­lic aware­ness of pub­lic toi­let provision Toi­let improve­ments for people of all-abilities
Pro­moted paths and pop­u­lar moun­tain paths	Well sign-pos­ted paths Well main­tained paths that are in good condition
Ranger patrols	Patrols at key sens­it­ive times Assist­ance to land man­agers and com­munit­ies with key issues
Land man­age­ment support	Fund­ing avail­able for infra­struc­ture improvements
Stat­utory measures	Man­age­ment agree­ments and guidelines at key hotspots
Enhanced Police Presence	Enhanced police pres­ence to be deployed in Glen­more dur­ing school sum­mer hol­i­days (FLS, CNPA and THC)
Lit­ter	Cairngorms Lit­ter Net­work to pro­mote com­munity- led volun­teer­ing in part­ner­ship with Keep Scot­land Beautiful Ranger patrols and land-managers

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Ranger Ser­vice priorities

1. The Part­ner­ship Frame­work for Ranger Ser­vices in the Park sets out the vis­ion for Ranger Services:

>A high-pro­file net­work of Cairngorms’ rangers con­nect­ing people with an out­stand­ing Nation­al Park. They work col­lab­or­at­ively to provide an innov­at­ive, inspir­a­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice. They are com­mit­ted to enhan­cing pub­lic enjoy­ment, under­stand­ing and care of the out­doors, focused on main­tain­ing the qual­ity and rel­ev­ance of their work and recog­nised, val­ued and sup­por­ted by their employ­ers, oth­er related pro­fes­sions and the public.

1. In the con­text of the man­aging for vis­it­ors, Ranger Ser­vices will focus on pos­it­ive face-to-face engage­ment with vis­it­ors at key hotspots:

• To ensure a warm wel­come and provide sup­port to help people enjoy the outdoors;
• To increase aware­ness, under­stand­ing, care and respons­ible use of the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age; and
• To sup­port the sus­tain­able man­age­ment and use of the out­doors to meet a range of social, eco­nom­ic and envir­on­ment­al objectives.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

1. CNPA will con­tin­ue to devel­op the fam­ily of ranger ser­vices across the Park through provid­ing grant-aid, pro­mot­ing train­ing and devel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies, advising on ranger roles, and a strong visu­al iden­tity and brand­ing. Table 3 sets out cur­rent Ranger Ser­vice cov­er­age in the Park.

Table 3- Ranger Ser­vice Coverage

SER­VICE	FTE RANGERS
Atholl Estate	2
Bal­mor­al Estate	2.6
Glen Tanar Char­it­able Trust	1.6
Rothiemurchus	2
RSPB Com­munity Ranger
Muir of Din­net Nation­al Nature Reserve	1.5
Glen­liv­et Estate	1
FLS Glen­more	2
NTS Mar Lodge	2
Angus Alive – Glen Doll	2
Cairngorm Moun­tain	1.5
Cairngorms Con­nect
High­life Highland
Dorenell (cross boundary)	1.5
Aber­deen­shire Council	0.5
Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority	4 full time 9 seasonal
Rangers

Com­mu­nic­a­tion Planning

1. We will con­tin­ue with the suc­cess­ful #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er cam­paign which was developed with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship in 2020 to pro­mote com­mon mes­saging is sup­port of vis­it­ors, com­munit­ies and loc­al busi­nesses. Detailed com­mu­nic­a­tions will be agreed through the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors and Tour­ism Response Groups but col­lect­ively will be:-

• Pos­it­ive — shar­ing and ​‘cel­eb­rat­ing’ what people can respons­ibly do in outdoors
• Con­sist­ent — we all need to say the same thing
• Con­cise — get our most import­ant pos­it­ive, con­sist­ent mes­sages across in with few words

1. Where prac­tic­able vari­able mes­sage signs will be deployed to provide ​“real time” inform­a­tion on the status of car parks in the vicin­ity of the sign. Table 4 sets out the cur­rent loc­a­tion of the VMS signs and the rel­ev­ant man­aging body. Fur­ther inform­a­tion will be added to CNPA web­site so that all parties are clear about roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies for updated in each sign.

Table 4 – Vari­able Mes­sage Signs

Loc­a­tion	Respons­ible Body
Coylumbridge	CairnGorm Moun­tain
Minor Rd to Glenmore	Forestry and Land Scotland
(Sled Dog turn off)
A97 A944 junc­tion head­ing west	Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Roads
Din­net A93 west of X roads	Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Roads

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B976 Minor County Rd Junc­tion to Loch Muick	Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Roads
	Bal­mor­al Estate

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Mon­it­or­ing and Evaluation

1. A large per­cent­age of vis­it­ors con­tin­ue to enjoy the out­doors respons­ibly. There­fore mon­it­or­ing of vis­it­or beha­viour at key hot­spots will be used to guide resources and the deploy­ment of staff.

2. In sup­port of ongo­ing mon­it­or­ing key vis­it­or pres­sure peri­ods will be agreed by the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group and will include:

• Glas­gow Fair hol­i­day peri­od and the fol­low­ing 2 weekends;
• School hol­i­day dates;
• Not­able ​“events”.

1. A new mon­it­or­ing frame­work and form has been developed for 2022 in con­junc­tion with NatureScot to allow con­sist­ent report­ing of the work of Ranger Ser­vices across Scot­land – see Annex I. Data gathered through the revised form will feed into the nation­al mon­it­or­ing require­ments of the new Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Strategy Coordin­a­tion Group.

2. There will be a post-sea­son eval­u­ation exer­cise under­taken com­men­cing on Octo­ber 2022. The key find­ings will be used to devel­op the man­aging for visitor’s agenda in Act­ive Cairngorms.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Feb­ru­ary 2022

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Annex I- Mon­it­or­ing frame­work for vis­it­or man­age­ment issues

Intro­duc­tion

1. The arrange­ments for col­lec­tion and man­age­ment of key inform­a­tion have been reviewed by CNPA Ranger Man­ager, Lucy Ford, in dis­cus­sion with part­ner Ranger Ser­vices. This short paper sets out the key inform­a­tion require­ments to enable all act­ive part­ners in vis­it­or man­age­ment to make real­ist­ic resource decisions and to sup­port the devel­op­ment of fur­ther plans.

Short Term – April to October

1. To gath­er intel­li­gence and identi­fy risks that will need address­ing with short term man­age­ment inter­ven­tions at an area and Park-wide level the fol­low­ing min­im­um data must be gathered and shared weekly:

a. Num­ber of tents at a giv­en site

b. Num­ber of open fires and bar­be­cues at a giv­en site

c. Num­ber of camper vans stay­ing over night

d. Num­ber of ser­i­ous irre­spons­ible access incidents.

1. Annex 2 sets out the feed­back form for the short term mon­it­or­ing period.

2. This data will be gathered by each site-based ranger ser­vice on a weekly basis and col­lated by the CNPA for the Man­aging for Vis­it­ors Group. Addi­tion­al inform­a­tion on camp sites, fires and irre­spons­ible access out­with of site based ranger ser­vices will be gathered by CNPA sea­son­al ranger staff.

Medi­um Term

1. In order to ascer­tain what worked well and what didn’t and what inter­ven­tions will need to take for­ward to imple­ment a deliv­er­able vis­it­or man­age­ment pro­cess across key hot spots in the Park a review will be pre­pared to include the following:

a. Sum­mary of camp­ing trends over key period

b. Sum­mary of fires trend over key period:

c. Data on num­ber of vis­it­ors and key trends in rela­tion to peak periods:

d. Trends in irre­spons­ible behaviour

e. Sum­mary and reflec­tions on interventions:

f. Sum­mary and reflec­tions on communications.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Annex 2 2022 CNP Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Form Vis­it­or mon­it­or­ing form for all sites across the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This form is to be filled in through­out the sea­son with fort­nightly reports presen­ted to the man­aging for vis­it­ors group. *Required

1. Select Area * Mark only one oval. Deeside Badenoch & Strath­spey Blair Atholl Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Angus Glens

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CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM Paper 2/2/22, 10:36 AM 2022 CNP Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Data

1. Select patrol des­tin­a­tion * Mark only one oval. Aviemore Boat of Garten Carr-Bridge Crom­dale Dal­whin­nie Dul­nain Bridge Glen­more Grant­own Inshriach Kin­gussie Kincraig/​Loch Insh Loch Pity­oul­ish Lag­gan Loch Garten Nethy Bridge New­ton­more Rothiemurchus Blair Atholl Kil­liecrankie Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Aboyne Bal­later Brae­mar Cam­bus o’May Glen Tanar Glen Shee Linn of Dee/​Quoich 10

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CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM Paper Muir of Din­net Strath­don Glen Lee — Glen Mark Glen Esk Glen Doll Other:

1. Date or peri­od data collected *
2. Num­ber of people engaged with *
3. Num­ber of tents encountered in patrol area *
4. Num­ber of overnight­ing camper­vans encountered in patrol area *
5. Num­ber of dogs on a lead (or under very close con­trol) encountered *
6. Num­ber of dogs off the lead (or not under very close con­trol) encountered *
7. Num­ber of live fires/​BBQs extinguished *
8. Num­ber of old fire/​BBQ remains cleared *
9. Num­ber of black bin bags of lit­ter col­lec­ted (units of .25) * ||

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CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM Paper

1. Incid­ent report required? * Mark only one oval. Yes No 12