Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 Annex 1 23 March 2026

Annex 1

Indi­vidu­al pro­ject summaries

Pro­ject 1 — Wood­land Expansion

Activ­ity and budget	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Wood­land expan­sion on Atholl	990 hec­tares (ha) of nat­ive wood­land at Dal­namein and Glen Fend­er Schemes are largely planted. Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) fund­ing is match fund­ing for the Cairngorms 2030 (C2030) programme.	* Plant­ing at Glen Fend­er ends March 2026.
Aspen Net­work devel­op­ment £50,000	The map­ping for 2025 is now com­plete (there is an ongo­ing annu­al pro­gramme of sur­vey / map­ping), and we are devel­op­ing the access­ib­il­ity of the record­ing app to allow volun­teers to sur­vey sig­ni­fic­ant aspen stands in future. This will allow the pri­or­it­isa­tion of sites and sub­sequent rein­force­ment plant­ing — prob­ably from the newly Nature Res­tor­a­tion Fund (NRF) fun­ded River­trees nurs­ery stock.	Sur­vey — spring 2026⁄27. New plant­ing — Winter 2027⁄28 and early 2028⁄29.
Com­munity Tree Nurs­ery £100,000	Alba Explorers grant approved, nurs­ery man­ager has been appoin­ted and seed col­lec­tion begins in Spring. Lease on Rot­tal site has been signed. Volun­teers will be recruited to oper­ate the nurs­ery under the man­agers super­vi­sion. Schools will be invited to send stu­dents in either sum­mer or autumn 2026.	New Nurs­ery man­ager starts March 2026. Seed col­lec­tion Spring 2026. Site pre­par­a­tion spring 2026. School vis­its likely to starts sum­mer 2026.
Mont­ane Wood­land £85,000	Pro­ject plan has been under­taken with Mar Lodge Estate. Volun­teers will be recruited later this year. Trees being grown / selec­ted by Trees for Life for plant­ing in winter 2027⁄28.	Final­ise plan with Nation­al Trust for Scot­land (NTS). Volun­teers’ recruit­ment qarter (Q) 3 and 4 2026. Final plant­ing sites selec­ted and approved Spring 2027. Plant­ing winter 2027⁄28.
Com­munity sup­port for Forestry Con­sulta­tions £23,000	A new plan has emerged fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with engage­ment team. Now guid­ance on con­sulta­tion pro­cess, writ­ten between Scot­tish Forestry (SF) and the Park Author­ity, will be placed on the Park Author­ity web­site. Poten­tial attendees to train­ing are asked to request via web­site so that demand can be assessed (num­bers and loc­a­tion). This will reduce con­sulta­tion fatigue. Train­ing will be delivered dir­ectly by pro­ject staff sup­por­ted by SF.	Devel­op ​‘how to’ advice pack­age — March 2026. Pro­duce com­munity focused web­site con­tent and launch — July 2026. Col­lect Interest from com­munit­ies for ​‘how to’ train­ing ses­sions — Decem­ber 2026. Roll out train­ing to com­munity groups March / July 2027.

Pro­ject 2 Peat­land Restoration

Activ­ity	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Peat­land pro­ject deliv­ery 2026⁄27 £3.5 mil­lion (match fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) Peat­land Action Process).	There is a reg­u­lar annu­al cycle of peat­land res­tor­a­tion pro­jects. For 2026⁄27 there are 12 pro­jects con­trib­ut­ing to the annu­al tar­get of 1300ha, some pro­jects are pri­or­ity. SG cap­it­al budget is £3.5 mil­lion which may mean that not all pro­jects are achieved this year.	Pro­ject devel­op­ment Janu­ary ‑March. Pro­ject plan­ning March ‑June. * Pro­ject deliv­ery June- March.
Peat­land pro­ject deliv­ery 2025⁄26	15 pro­jects deliv­ery in 2025⁄26 cur­rently being com­pleted, five of which are accru­als from 2024⁄25.	* Pro­ject clos­ure and com­ple­tion — April 2026.

Pro­ject 3 — Nature Recovery

Activ­ity	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Deer lar­ders £400,000	The two exist­ing lar­ders are both oper­at­ing well and deliv­er­ing good deer cull num­bers and ven­ison for com­munity use as planned. Com­munity out­lets in Pit­lo­chry and Atholl area are receiv­ing ven­ison and schools in North Perth­shire and Deeside are receiv­ing edu­ca­tion­al vis­its on how to cook ven­ison along with ​‘home packs’ for stu­dents. Two new lar­ders are being planned and have approv­al from NLHF. In Glen Clova and Atholl Estate. Their ven­ison will sup­port the school use and go to Coun­try Food Trust for use as long life ​‘ready meals’ for loc­al dis­tri­bu­tion. Poten­tially 4.8 tonnes of ven­ison pro­duced annu­al equals approx­im­ately 48,000 meals.	Exist­ing lar­der will con­tin­ue to oper­ate for next nine years. Clova and Atholl lar­ders will be in place by Sum­mer 2026. Addi­tion­al ven­ison begins on last two Autumn 2026. Assess­ment of bene­fits — ven­ison for com­munit­ies’ reduc­tion in deer num­bers, addi­tion­al and sup­por­ted new
Future Skills pro­ject £297,000	Skills devel­op­ment was iden­ti­fied through the Expres­sion of Interest (EOI) pro­cess. We will run a pilot scheme co-designed with West Grampi­an Deer Man­age­ment Group (DMG) estates deliv­er­ing skills to estate staff, aimed at future changes in man­age­ment and devel­op­ment of estate busi­ness to make them more resi­li­ent. We aim to recruit a con­tract­or to under­take the co-design pro­cess with the estates and then obtain train­er for the iden­ti­fied skills needs. The ambi­tion is to roll out a wider scheme post C2030 as part of the pro­gramme leg­acy actions.	jobs. Under­taken in winter 2026⁄27  Approv­al from NLHF April 2026. Pre­par­a­tion of tender, put through Pub­lic Con­tracts Scot­land (PCS) for a skills pro­gramme coordin­at­or. April 2026. Co-design pro­cess with estates to identi­fy train­ing needs, Q3 and Q4 2026. Hir­ing of train­ing part­ners for spe­cif­ic skills Q1 2027. Deliv­ery of train­ing. Eval­u­ation — to be determ­ined with estates.
Wood­land Net­work devel­op­ment £700,000	We are aim­ing to deliv­er wood­land cor­ridors link­ing catch­ments. Under act­ive con­sid­er­a­tion are three pos­sible schemes: north­ern Glen Tilt (Atholl, Mar Lodge and Felar estates), Dal­nac­ar­doch (Dur­rel Found­a­tion) and Glen­shee (upper Glen planting).	Approv­al from NLHF April / May 2026. Feas­ib­il­ity stud­ies for Tilt and Glen Shee schemes. — April 2026. * Final Scheme designs, including
Con­ser­va­tion Graz­ing £60,000	Feas­ib­il­ity stud­ies are ongo­ing for all three and a final decision will be made on receipt of these. All three are key hab­it­at net­work links which have already been assessed. Upland plant­ing attracts lower levels of fund­ing sup­port, so this con­tri­bu­tion is neces­sary to make the pro­jects hap­pen. Which pro­jects are sup­por­ted will depend upon cost mod­els. An EOI request from Dur­rel at Dal­nac­ar­doch to start a pro­gramme of cattle graz­ing to man­age hab­it­at in upland areas. This is a good oppor­tun­ity to study in depth the eco­lo­gic­al effects of this type of graz­ing through baseline stud­ies on inver­teb­rate pop­u­la­tions and hab­it­ats. Cattle will be from nearby farms and satel­lite col­lars will be used to avoid fencing.	Dal­nac­ar­doch – to be determ­ined. Applic­a­tion to SF for grant – to be determ­ined. Con­tract­or tenders for fen­cing and plant­ing — to be determ­ined. Site plant­ing — Likely winter 2027⁄28. Final details have yet to be agreed with Dur­rell. How­ever, they are keen to start as soon as pos­sible poten­tially in sum­mer 2026.

Pro­ject 4 — Cairngorms Future Farming

Activ­ity	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Pilot farms devel­op­ment £260,000	Ongo­ing devel­op­ment of good prac­tices on farms. We are call­ing for expendit­ure of grant to be com­pleted by the end of the year or at least com­mit­ted spend for Q1 2027.	Final expendit­ure if required by Decem­ber 2026. Mon­it­or­ing sur­veys, ongo­ing advice and sup­port as requested.
Regen­er­at­ive Farm­ing train­ing Up to £100,000 cap­it­al funding	This pro­cess aims to recruit five to 15 farms to a pro­gramme of train­ing and dir­ect advice from a regen­er­at­ive farm­ing experts Car­oline Grind­lerod. (Wilder­cul­ture CiC). Annu­al one to one ses­sion on the farms, sup­por­ted group meet­ings, four group work­shops over 2026⁄27 and fund­ing to sup­port changes.	Recruit­ment events Feb­ru­ary 2026. Farms recruited May 2026. * Train­ing events and farm vis­its on going until end of 2028.
Scen­ario mod­el­ling sup­port pack­age £30,000 (if 10 farms recruited) Up to £50,000 cap­it­al funding.	This will be open to farm­ers and crofters in the Nation­al Park and will util­ise experts to mod­el fin­an­cial impacts of adopt­ing up to five sus­tain­able prac­tices per farm (using Farmax soft­ware). This will be one to one sup­port togeth­er with up to £5,000 fund­ing to sup­port changes.	Applic­a­tions sub­mit­ted by March 2026. Sup­port will run from Sum­mer 2026.

Pro­ject 5 — Cli­mate Resi­li­ent Catchments

Activ­ity	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Upper Dee River res­tor­a­tion £400,000	This work to remove levees and bank rein­force­ment on a stretch of river Dee adjoin­ing Inver­cauld and Mar Lodge. Scheme includes wet­land improve­ments in adja­cent areas for wad­ing birds and Large Woody Struc­ture (LWS) placed in-stream to improve hab­it­at qual­ity. Approv­al for plan­ning and Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA) are obtained and con­tract­or has been appointed.	Site works starts August 2026. Works com­plete Octo­ber 2026.
Slu­gain Burn £500,000	The realign­ment of the burn from a straightened, embanked chan­nel to a new, longer nat­ur­al­ised chan­nel lead­ing to the Dul­nain. It will include a replace­ment bridge to remove this block­age to flow of burn and facil­it­ate a more reli­able access to car park­ing area. Final design is cur­rently under­way which will also allow an accur­ate cost estimate.	Design and final cost­ing April 2026. Sub­mis­sion to Plan­ning / SEPA April 2026. * Site start may be Q3 2026 or pos­sible in 2027 depend­ant on tim­ing of approvals.
Bal­later Flood Issues Group £200,000	The Bal­later Flood Issues Group is a com­munity ini­ti­at­ive, under the Cairngorms Con­nect, look­ing to improve flood resi­li­ence to the vil­lage. They have com­mis­sioned a report from cbec on the feas­ib­il­ity of short­l­is­ted options for activ­ity. Fol­low­ing a com­munity engage­ment pro­cess sup­por­ted by the C2030 staff a more detailed study is required on the pre­ferred options. C2030 role is to sup­port the pro­cess with tech­nic­al advice, engage­ment, plan­ning and con­tract man­age­ment. Fund­ing sup­port will be used for pro­cess and if pos­sible, for con­struc­tion, though addi­tion­al fund­ing may be required.	Com­munity Engage­ment on options. Detailed scheme design. Plan­ning / SEPA applic­a­tions. Site works.

Pro­ject 6 — Green Fin­ance and Com­munity Wealth Building

Activ­ity	Cur­rent status	Next steps
Sup­port for estate and com­munit­ies £35,000	Work with three estates and their loc­al com­munit­ies (Dor­back, Dal­nac­ar­doch, Glen Prosen)	* This var­ies accord­ing to com­munity needs, and the final out­put is likely to be at
Light touch sup­port mod­el development	Devel­op­ing a ​‘light touch’ sup­port mod­el to allow for wider sup­port of oth­er com­munit­ies and estates. This can be applied by pub­lic agencies.	* Work com­pleted by end of pro­ject in Feb­ru­ary 2027.
Nat­ur­al Cap­it­al Com­munity Part­ner­ships (NCCP)	Pro­ject