Previous meeting notes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 4

Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um Held online on Wed­nes­day 13^th Septem­ber 2023 Present: Hil­ary Quick(HQ) LOAF Ben Dol­phin (BD) LOAF/NTS Mar Lodge Elean­or Mack­in­tosh (EM) CNPA Board John Gri­er­son (JG) LOAF – Chair Tre­vor Thorn­ley (TT) LOAF Adam Streeter-Smith (AQSS) CNPA Colin Simpson (CS) CNPA Vicky Hilton (VH) CNPA

Apo­lo­gies: Mark Johnston

Wel­come and Minutes of last meet­ing on 8^th Feb­ru­ary 2023 Dis­cussed Action

• JG wel­comed all to the meeting
• Minutes of the last meet­ing approved
• VH to devel­op fire guid­ance for groups. (Since actioned and circulated)

1. Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan Dis­cussed Action
   • AQSS gave stra­tegic over­view of action plan, rela­tion­ship to oth­er plans and con­tent. Some con­tent re- Cairngorms2030 around Green Health to be added.
   • JG on pro­ject board, work­ing on detail just now, aim is to cir­cu­late draft end this month. Going to Board 24^th Novem­ber. Envir­on­ment­al impact assess­ment and equal­it­ies assess­ment on plan being car­ried out.
   • Key points ASS high­lighted — Quiet areas for nature (next agenda item):

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 2 of 4

• Paths & trails sec­tion. Core path plan review, mon­it­or­ing, people cent­ric. Will be some future dis­cus­sion / update on related items for LOAF group.
• Man­aging for vis­it­ors work — Colin will update.
• Opened for ques­tions Act­ive Cairngorms — no feed­back from LOAF members.
• Colin updated on the MfV dis­cus­sion at board last week.
• Mostly around fires and poten­tial to con­sult regard­ing byelaws. Board had no strong feel­ing for byelaw, more inform­a­tion required. Likely very open con­sulta­tion around fires, not spe­cific­ally byelaws.
• May be implic­a­tions for Act­ive Cairngorms regard­ing enforce­ment / ranger role etc
• BD raised point regard­ing leaf­lets (fire one use­ful) and sig­nage / SOAC (the need to be con­sist­ent with Code but flexible).
• Next steps — final draft end month, cir­cu­late to loaf mem­bers for com­ment. AQSS

1. Quiet Areas for Nature Dis­cussed Action
   • AQSS- Key point — not just Caper­cail­lie, ref­er­ence to Loch Kin­nord golden eye breed­ing impacted by recre­ation that LOAF been involved in agree­ing vol­un­tary man­age­ment agreements.
   • NPPP — action any­way to reduce dis­turb­ance but brought for­ward by Caper work. but would have been done anyway
     • oth­er areas Dot­ter­al at CM, moun­tain bike dam­age on plateau.
   • Ini­tially work will focus on Caper, but ulti­mately be more wide ranging.
   • Sup­port nation­al biod­iversity plan — focus halt­ing decline sens­it­ive species
   • Will largely be vol­un­tary — can mon­it­or, if cata­stroph­ic fail­ure, can col­lect­ively take more action (last resort, ideally avoid).

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 3 of 4

• What will look like — spa­tial maps (not yet done), AQSS showed mocked up example of small loch and asso­ci­ated wood­land. NB Maps will be a man­age­ment tool — will not be a pub­lished set of maps for pub­lic to see. Will be to guide man­age­ment activ­ity and sup­port decision mak­ing eg more ranger patrols or no large-scale event per­mis­sions. Not about exclud­ing people from areas or redu­cing vis­it­or numbers.
• Aim — draft maps to take to board meet­ing in Nov.
• EM left the meet­ing (con­nec­tion issues)
• Short dis­cus­sion — mainly around mon­it­or­ing times­cales, what suc­cess looks like, evid­ence needed to jus­ti­fy quiet area.
• LOAF mem­bers con­firmed sup­port for devel­op­ment of quiet areas.

1. Caper dog sea­son Dis­cussed Action

   • VH gave a quick update on the paper
   • JG quer­ied begin­ning of sea­son being earlier
   • LOAF mem­bers con­firmed sup­port for extend­ing dog on leads sign to 31^st Aug.

2. Update paper Dis­cussed Action a) New path from bridge to Loch Insh in Kin­craig, works due to start shortly to remove crash bar­ri­er to allow offi­cial open­ing of path and new sec­tion of SW. b) Raised path via gabi­on bas­kets. Even­tu­ally hoped this will form part of Deeside way exten­sion. Import­ant for Brae­mar com­munity net­work. c) Might come back to LOAF with regard to advice for new maps and accessibility.

   • Dog friendly Cairngorms — new intern Wendy Mitchell

3. AOCB Dis­cussed Action

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ügh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 4 of 4

• AQSS — 8 – 10 Nov NPUK access officers meet­ing held in the Cairngorms this year — invite for couple of mem­bers to join on any site vis­its / din­ner. AQSS will email around when have fur­ther details. AQSS
• AQSS — Dal­whin­nie rail­way cross­ing. CNPA & THC meet­ing with Scot­ways soon. Reas­sure LOAF work pro­gress­ing and ongoing.
• BD — Noted appre­ci­ation of Police Scot­land patrolling on Deeside. Review com­ing up, sus­pi­cion might not get again as was quieter peri­od when out. CS also noted mem­ber­ship of PS on MfV group and con­struct­ive input there too.
• AQSS — Quick ski tour­ing update. Access team invest­ig­ated leg­al pos­i­tion of ski tour­ers using down­hill pis­ted slopes. Mainly issues at Glenshee.

Date of next meet­ing January/​February 2024

Meet­ing closed 2000