The Cairngorms Connect project has benefited from nearly £200,000 funding from the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund.
The money, a sum of £197,400, will be used for a restoration project to improve forest and river habitats in the Cairngorms Connect partnership area, which stretches over 60,000 hectares.
Cairngorms Connect aims to enhance habitat, species and ecological process across the national park over the next 200 years.
Programme manager for the project, Jeremy Roberts, said: “The funding is a significant boost to our partners’ large-scale forest and river restoration projects, including the removal of invasive non-native conifers which threaten our native biodiversity, and restoring rivers to improve water quality for people and nature.
“Grants such as the Nature Restoration Fund also enable us to bring in contractors to undertake our collaborative restoration work.”
The Nature Restoration Fund
The government’s Nature Restoration Fund supports a range of urban, rural, marine and coastal focused projects with the aim of tackling biodiversity loss and climate change.
It also encourages projects in those areas to create new jobs and training, as well as educational opportunities, wherever possible.
Biodiversity minister, Lorna Slater, explained why projects like this are important.
She said: “Too much of Scotland’s natural environment is degraded after years of over-exploitation, but this government is committed to restoring nature and our wildlife.
“The Nature Restoration Fund will play a big role in delivering these aspirations, and the projects we are funding today are just the beginning.
“The Fund kick starts a new approach, supporting longer-term, larger, landscape-scale projects across Scotland – on land and at sea – that address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.”
Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms
Cairngorms Connect is not the only project that has benefited from the Nature Restoration Fund.
The Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms (RIC) has been awarded £10,700.
This will help them continue their work managing habitats for dark bordered beauty moths and critically endangered pine hoverflies.
RIC project officer, Genevieve Tompkins, said: “This funding provides an important opportunity to undertake work on the ground, improving the fortunes of these extremely vulnerable species.
“This habitat work will also benefit many other invertebrates who require on diverse woodlands.”
‘There is hope’
Land managers Wildland Limited, Forestry and Land Scotland, RSPB Scotland and NatureScot have partnered together to create Cairngorms Connect.
It is hoped that investment in ‘green recovery’ could be one of the ways to make nature more sustainable and resilient.
NatureScot Chief Executive, Francesca Osowska, said projects like Cairngorms Connect are the way forward.
She said: “COP26 in Glasgow has driven home the urgency of the situation we are all facing. But there is hope. By restoring nature, protecting and enhancing habitats and safeguarding marine life we can look forward to a nature-positive future.
“Scotland is taking action now to meet the huge challenges and pressures that nature is facing and its projects like these that will make the difference and set us on the road to recovery.
“Climate change needs nature-based solutions, not only to help us reach net zero by 2045 but to create a healthier, more resilient Scotland.”