UK Nation­al Parks Con­fer­ence 2026

Wed­nes­day 16 to Fri­day 18 Septem­ber 2026 Mac­don­ald Aviemore Resort, Aviemore

Our host

Megan McCub­bin Megan McCub­bin is a zoolo­gist, wild­life TV presenter, author and cam­paign­er. Best known for co-host­ing BBC Spring­watch and Anim­al Park, Megan is so pas­sion­ate about our nat­ur­al world and enhan­cing our rela­tion­ship with it.

Trained as a sci­ent­ist, she has worked around the world as a bear beha­vi­our­al spe­cial­ist and shark research­er, before grow­ing her career in the media as a sci­ence com­mu­nic­at­or. She has released two books, so far, and is known for lend­ing her voice to cam­paigns for anim­al wel­fare, cli­mate change and social justice.

Speak­er bio­graph­ies (alpha­bet­ic­al)

Craig Ben­nett OBE, The Wild­life Trusts Craig Ben­nett OBE is Chief Exec­ut­ive of The Wild­life Trusts and has been described as ​“one of the country’s top envir­on­ment­al campaigners”.

He is an Hon­or­ary Pro­fess­or of Sus­tain­ab­il­ity and Innov­a­tion at Alli­ance Manchester Busi­ness School, an Asso­ci­ate Fel­low of Homer­ton Col­lege (Cam­bridge) and a Fel­low of the Cam­bridge Insti­tute for Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Lead­er­ship. He is also a Com­mis­sion­er on the UK Government’s Clean Power 2030 Advis­ory Commission.

Formerly CEO of Friends of the Earth, he led major cam­paigns on bees, frack­ing and against air­port expan­sion. He has vast exper­i­ence of design­ing and con­trib­ut­ing to exec­ut­ive edu­ca­tion and lead­er­ship pro­grammes globally.

Craig received an OBE for ser­vices to the envir­on­ment in the King’s New Year 2026 Honour’s List.

Jon­nie Hall, NFU Scotland Jon­nie Hall is the Deputy CEO and Dir­ect­or of Policy with NFU Scot­land, where he has led on all aspects of policy work for over 19 years. Pri­or to that, Jon­nie spent nine years with what is now Scot­tish Land and Estates.

His career in agri­cul­tur­al and rur­al devel­op­ment policy now extends to well over 40 years, hav­ing gradu­ated from New­castle and Oxford uni­ver­sit­ies with three degrees in agri­cul­tur­al eco­nom­ics in the 1980s. An aca­dem­ic and con­sultancy career then followed.

Jon­nie has lived in Scot­land since 1998, dur­ing which time he has worked with the Scot­tish and UK gov­ern­ments, as well as scores of oth­er stake­hold­ers, on everything and any­thing that impacts on farm­ing and croft­ing in Scot­land and the UK.

Over the years, Jon­nie has also done his fair share of lamb­ing and gen­er­al farm work, but these days he tends to run over hills without a stick or dog.

Sarah-Jane Laing, Scot­tish Land and Estates Sarah-Jane Laing is the Chief Exec­ut­ive of Scot­tish Land and Estates, the organ­isa­tion rep­res­ent­ing land-based busi­nesses, landown­ers, land man­agers and rur­al enter­prises across Scot­land. As the first woman to lead SLE, an organ­isa­tion estab­lished 120 years ago, she over­sees its work to influ­ence policy, sup­port sus­tain­able land man­age­ment, and cham­pi­on the con­tri­bu­tion rur­al Scot­land makes to the nation’s eco­nomy and environment.

With more than two dec­ades of exper­i­ence in pub­lic affairs, Laing is widely recog­nised for her expert­ise in rur­al policy, hous­ing, plan­ning, wild­life man­age­ment, cli­mate change and land use. Her career has been defined by her abil­ity to nav­ig­ate polit­ic­al com­plex­ity, build con­struct­ive rela­tion­ships across gov­ern­ment and industry, and ensure that rur­al per­spect­ives are heard in nation­al debates. Before join­ing SLE, she spent a dec­ade work­ing in loc­al author­it­ies and hous­ing asso­ci­ations, spe­cial­ising in hous­ing research, rur­al hous­ing strategy, and policy devel­op­ment. She lives on her fam­ily farm in the Scot­tish Bor­ders, main­tain­ing close ties to the sec­tors and com­munit­ies she represents.

Dr Deborah Long, Scot­tish Envir­on­ment LINK Dr Deborah Long is Chief Exec­ut­ive at Scot­tish Envir­on­ment LINK, the net­work for envir­on­ment­al NGOs in Scot­land. She leads this act­ive and grow­ing net­work of eNGOs, who work togeth­er to build a sus­tain­able Scot­land, being a strong coher­ent voice for Scotland’s envir­on­ment, its people and the planet.

Deborah is an act­ive board mem­ber of char­it­ies in Scot­land, in con­ser­va­tion, envir­on­ment­al rights and com­munity development.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Deborah became a Just Trans­ition Com­mis­sion­er, provid­ing advice on work­ing with com­munit­ies to achieve a just trans­ition to net zero and nature positive.

Fiona Milden, Oxy­gen Conservation Fiona Milden is Man­aging Dir­ect­or at Oxy­gen Con­ser­va­tion, a lead­ing private organ­isa­tion acquir­ing and man­aging land to deliv­er long-term, land­scape-scale res­tor­a­tion. She provides oper­a­tion­al lead­er­ship to Oxy­gen Conservation’s estate teams, who col­lect­ively man­age 50,000 acres across the UK, with the goal of restor­ing nature and provid­ing pos­it­ive envir­on­ment­al impact.

Her role sits at the heart of the organisation’s mis­sion to Scale Con­ser­va­tion: trans­lat­ing long-term envir­on­ment­al ambi­tion into prac­tic­al, meas­ur­able out­comes on the ground. The team’s work restor­ing nat­ive wood­lands, peat­lands, grass­lands and rivers across the port­fo­lio gen­er­ates nat­ur­al cap­it­al value via premi­um qual­ity car­bon and biod­iversity cred­its. The delib­er­ate diversity of the estates also sup­ports com­munity homes, regen­er­at­ive agri­cul­ture, eco­tour­ism and renew­ables opportunities.

A geo­graph­er and chartered town plan­ner by back­ground, Fiona brings nearly two dec­ades of exper­i­ence at the inter­sec­tion of the nat­ur­al and built envir­on­ment. Before join­ing Oxy­gen Con­ser­va­tion, Fiona served as Group Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment Dir­ect­or at Vistry Group, one of the UK’s lead­ing house­build­ers, where she advised the PLC Board on reg­u­lat­ory change and led the organisation’s response to major plan­ning reforms.

Fiona has pre­vi­ously been recog­nised by The Plan­ner magazine as one of its ​‘Women of Influ­ence’ and she is pas­sion­ate about the role plan­ning can play as a force for good. She brings that con­vic­tion dir­ectly to her work sup­port­ing land­scape scale res­tor­a­tion of some of the UK’s most val­ued landscapes.

Out­side of work, Fiona’s con­nec­tion to the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment is per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al: she enjoys walk­ing in the Shrop­shire hills, moun­tain bik­ing and camper­van adventures.

Prof Dav­id Reay, Uni­ver­sity of Edinburgh Prof Dave Reay is Chair in Car­bon Man­age­ment and Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Edin­burgh. He is an advisor on cli­mate action for a range of gov­ern­ment­al and non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­isa­tions across Scot­land and the UK.

Dave has worked on cli­mate change for over 30 years, with much of his research focus­ing on cli­mate change mit­ig­a­tion in land use and agri­cul­ture. He is espe­cially act­ive in efforts to enhance the pro­vi­sion and access­ib­il­ity of cli­mate education.

Dave chaired the Cli­mate Emer­gency Skills Action Plan steer­ing group in Scot­land, the UK Cli­mate Change Committee’s work­force and skills expert advis­ory group, and was part of the Green Jobs Taskforce for the UK Gov­ern­ment. He was appoin­ted as co-chair of the Just Trans­ition Com­mis­sion in 2023.

Pre­vi­ous to join­ing the Just Trans­ition Com­mis­sion he was exec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of the Edin­burgh Cli­mate Change Insti­tute and policy dir­ect­or of Scotland’s Centre of Expert­ise on Cli­mate Change.

Thank you to our sponsors

We are grate­ful for the sup­port of Scot­tish and South­ern Elec­tri­city Net­works (SSEN) and Tar­mac for help­ing make this event happen.

(Logos for Scot­tish & South­ern Elec­tri­city Net­works TRANS­MIS­SION and TAR­MAC A CRH COM­PANY are present here in the ori­gin­al document)

Fur­ther information

If you would like to book a place, or have any ques­tions about the event, please con­tact us on enquiries@​cairngorms.​co.​uk or call +44 (0) 1479 873 535.