Programme Board meeting notes - Capercaillie Emergency Plan 220425

Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan Pro­gramme Board meeting

Tues­day 22 April | Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey and Teams

Attendees

• Grant Moir: Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer, Park Author­ity (Chair)
• Car­o­lyn Robertson: Cairngorms Nature Man­ager, Park Authority
• Chris Don­ald: Head of Oper­a­tions Cent­ral High­lands, NatureScot
• Kenny Kort­land: Envir­on­ment Policy Officer, Scot­tish Forestry
• Alex Macleod: North Region Man­ager, Forestry and Land Scotland

Apo­lo­gies

• John Risby: High­land and Islands Con­ser­vat­or, Scot­tish Forestry

1. Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group It was con­firmed that Stu­art MacQuar­rie, NatureScot’s Deputy Dir­ect­or for Nature and Cli­mate Change, will chair the Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Group. All invit­a­tions to join the group have been accep­ted, so the mem­ber­ship is as below, and the group will aim to meet as soon as possible.

• Forest Research
• GWCT
• NatureScot
• RSPB
• RZSS
• Uni­ver­sity of Aberdeen
• Uni­ver­sity of St Andrews
• Uni­ver­sity of Glasgow

1. Recruit­ing a Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan Pro­ject Man­ager NatureScot, the Park Author­ity and FLS con­firmed that funds could be made avail­able to cov­er the cost of a 1 year post with scope to extend to 2 years sub­ject to fund­ing in ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇. Scot­tish Forestry fund­ing for year 1 is to be con­firmed and the RSPB have also offered to con­trib­ute. Due to cur­rent Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment head­count restric­tions, a con­tract­or will be recruited and man­aged by the Park Authority.

2. 2025 pri­or­it­ies An action agreed at the last meet­ing to help inform future fund­ing was to pri­or­it­ise activ­it­ies out­lined in the plan based on evid­ence and oppor­tun­it­ies for quick wins. A dis­cus­sion was had about the pri­or­it­ies lis­ted below:

3. Redu­cing dis­turb­ance The Park Author­ity is cur­rently fund­ing the Lek It Be cam­paign and work with the dog walk­ing com­munity and moun­tain bik­ing com­munity. Sub­ject to fur­ther fund­ing there is scope to upscale this work as redu­cing dis­turb­ance remains a priority.

4. Redu­cing the impacts of pred­a­tion Increas­ing num­bers of land­man­agers have begun to deliv­er diver­sion­ary feed­ing and fund­ing is needed to help effect­ively upscale the tech­nique in pre­par­a­tion for deliv­er­ing a 4‑year pro­gramme (2026 – 2030) of diver­sion­ary feed­ing on all sites in the Nation­al Park with suit­able hen records.

5. Expand­ing and improv­ing hab­it­at Scot­tish Forestry is con­tinu­ing to sup­port and enable wood­land expan­sion plans where there are bene­fits for caper­cail­lie, e.g. Aber­nethy, Kin­veachy, and sig­ni­fic­ant FGS fund­ing has been gran­ted for deer man­age­ment plans in caper­cail­lie areas to enable wood­land expan­sion plans without fen­cing. It was noted that con­tin­ued sup­port for hab­it­at expan­sion and improve­ment on sites like Aber­nethy and Kin­veachy would help the sites reach their max­im­um poten­tial for capercaillie.

6. Wood­land restruc­tur­ing With­in core areas it was noted by Scot­tish Forestry that more could be done to increase struc­tur­al diversity through thin­ning, winch­ing-over trees, small- scale felling to remove non-nat­ive con­ifers and effect­ive deer management.

7. Wood­land graz­ing and rob­ocut­ting It is an action in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan to build an evid­ence base and identi­fy tar­get areas in the Nation­al Park where wood­land graz­ing and rob­ocut­ting will deliv­er the greatest bene­fit for caper­cail­lie. Doing this asap will help to inform where lim­ited FGS fund­ing would have best effect.

8. Remov­ing and mark­ing fences Scot­tish Forestry will care­fully con­sider any pro­posed new fences and the action in the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan to tar­get the remov­al of fences with­in 1 to 5km of act­ive lek sites remains a pri­or­ity. To achieve this, fund­ing is needed to top up the FGS grant for fence removal.

Actions

1. Car­o­lyn to work with Stu­art to arrange the Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Groups’ first meeting.
2. Car­o­lyn to draft a new role descrip­tion suit­able for a con­tract­or to sup­port deliv­ery of the Caper­cail­lie Emer­gency Plan, ini­tially for 12 months.
3. Kenny to con­firm Scot­tish Forestry fund­ing for the above post.
4. Car­o­lyn to use the pri­or­it­ies dis­cussed to inform fun­drais­ing activ­it­ies and alloc­a­tion of NRF fund­ing (TBC).