Cairngorms Connect
Delivery Partners
Forestry and Land Scotland
RSPB, NatureScot
Timescale
Funding and costs
A core team (6.2 FTE), underwritten by partners £386k/annum (2024), commencing 1 January 2024.
Project summary
Cairngorms Connect stretches over 60,000 hectares and works to realise common aspirations for the landscape between the partnership organisations. The project is delivered by a partnership of neighbouring land managers including RSPB, Wildland, Forestry and Land Scotland, and NatureScot.
The Cairngorms is a landscape of ancient woodlands intersected by rivers and lochs, encircling an Arctic-like mountain massif. There are extensive tracts of blanket bog, wetlands and woodland bogs. The health of ecosystems found in the Cairngorms is not as good as it could be, due the impacts of grazing from wild deer, preventing natural regeneration, degraded peatlands and modified rivers. The project is committed to a 200-year vision and focuses on sequestering carbon, restoring & promoting natural processes and building resilience to climate change.
By 2030, the Cairngorms Connect partnership will be a leading ecological restoration project in Europe – for nature, climate, and people. It will be the exemplar of partnership working between private, government, and charity interests – essential for us to withstand the challenges of the nature crisis and climate emergency. The partners will deliver ecological restoration at scale, driven by social benefits, as much as climate and biodiversity benefits, and backed up by robust scientific evidence.
How was the project delivered in line with the Nature Network Framework principles?
Governance and decision making
Governance of Nature Networks will be transparent, democratic and accountable and with inclusive and diverse representation. There will be a focus on empowering and equipping delivery partners from across sectors.
Working in partnership at scale
Statutory bodies, a private landowner, and an eNGO managing together, constructively, and creatively; working in a supportive, trusting, and constructive way; strong financial governance; promoting the achievements of the individual partners and their respective brands, and celebrating the benefits of collaboration.
The Partnership is not driven by species targets but instead concentrates on creating a natural, wilder landscape for a wide range of species to flourish without significant intervention. The Cairngorms Connect area does however attract other organisations who wish to enhance species populations e.g. Saving Wildcats reintroductions and Pine hoverfly reinforcement.
Participation, engagement, and communication
Engagement with partnerships and communities will be inclusive, empowering and facilitate bottom-up activity. Simple and unifying messaging on Nature Networks across partners with a focus on building people’s connection with nature and fostering stewardship. Scotland’s public bodies will be exemplars, supporting the delivery of Nature Networks on their land.
Involving communities
Each partner, working within an agreed framework, offer original, genuine and exciting opportunities for engagement through a supported menu of options for engagement and involvement. These including providing local economic benefits and building skills and are supported by the CC Communications and Involvement Group. Cairngorms Connect has successfully delivered an annual conference for people working for the CC partners, and a separate event for local communities.
Knowledge and skills
Nature Networks will be developed using and sharing local knowledge, experience and best-practice, and will support the growth of green skills and jobs.
Each partner organisation has its own staff on ground, amounting to around 50 – 55 full-time employees (FTE). The partnership has appointed nine FTE to service partnership for the period of 5 years. CC regularly organises Knowledge Exchange visits where partners can learn from the extensive knowledge and experiences of the other partners in Cairngorms Connect. CC employs an apprentice wildlife manager to support their development in attaining relevant skills, experiences and qualifications. Many projects in the CC are delivered by local businesses bringing investment into local green jobs.
Data, mapping and monitoring
We will be adaptive in our approach to delivering Nature Networks and use the opportunity to improve our understanding of developing effective ecological connectivity. Monitoring approaches for Nature Networks will be developed with, and for, stakeholders to inform management and action that maximises effectiveness of the network. We will employ innovation and best practice in data collection, management and use. Mapping and use of data will be collaborative and holistic in approach.
Collaborative science – monitoring nine ‘200-year’ indicators; developing a strong partner-led science programme; hosting academic partners on our terms; supported by the CC Scientists’ Working Group. This includes supporting PhD research, and publishing work in scientific literature. Monitoring plays an important role in informing managements across CC area.
Finance and resourcing
Public and private funding and finance will be delivered through properly resourced, clearly directed, long-term, simple and accessible means.
Cairngorms Connect combines funding from natural capital, corporate support, private funding, and grant aid, to support the full programme of work acting as an exemplar in the role of ‘Green Finance’ in supporting ecological restoration. The programme is also exploring Lottery Fund opportunities.
An economic indicator is used to measure the direct and additional economic impact of the Cairngorms Connect project on the economy of the local area. The real market economic impact can be measured in terms of jobs and value added to the local economy.
Key benefits and improvements
There are direct links from the CC themes and Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045 vision and outcomes. As the UK’s foremost ecological restoration partnership with a proven record of delivery since 2014:
- Non-native conifer removal 2985ha – woodland condition and conversion to native woodland
- Pinewood field layer management – 597ha – woodland condition
- Pinewood plantation naturalisation – 1555ha – deadwood creation, woodland condition
- Peatland restored – 955ha
- Natural floodplain restored – 20ha
- New native woodland planted – 1185ha
- 59 FTEs employed in nature restoration
- Deer population management – red deer population maintained below 5/km² across 60,000ha since 2014
- £1.4 million spent locally on nature restoration
- Diverse, healthy, resilient Ecosystems will be and deliver a wide range of ecosystem services.
Challenges and barriers overcome
- Collaboration is beneficial improving contract value for money through packaging of works for contractors, and also for marketing of project successes. As a partnership, the team can interpret what is happening on a much larger scale and collaboratively promote their message with greater influence.
- There is a need for incentives that encourage (or are scaled to favour) the removal of barriers to restoration: reward work at a big scale; reward connected holdings, where land is contiguous and management creates a seamless landscape for wildlife; reward long-term commitment.
- There is need for more funding for floodplain and river restoration, which is an important area for climate change adaptation.
- The fixed timeframes of the funding has presented a challenge with the capacity to spend the money in time. There is need for commensurate support for delivery of work when there is a big budget to spend.
- Large-scale nature restoration brings local economic benefits through the creation of new posts to support the partnership and land management jobs. There are direct and wider employment opportunities associated with ecotourism from the project and the recreational opportunities.
- The biggest challenge has been where neighbouring estates are impacted by the level of deer reduction where they maintain a stalking interest on their own land. The reduction in deer numbers has led some neighbouring estates to change their focus away from stalking.
- Controlling deer to deliver tree recovery at a particular density within a particular timeframe is difficult in remote locations and high altitudes, and where there is poor seed source.
- Controlling deer populations, and lessening the impacts from wild grazing, is the fundamental intervention for achieving the aims of the project. As deer have no natural predators nowadays in Scotland, control will require ongoing direct intervention.
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