£12.4m for new nature project at park
Cairngorms National Park has been awarded nearly £12.5 million to launch a transformative project which will create new jobs, help protect local wildlife and tackle climate change.
As part of their Heritage Horizons Awards, the National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded the package to the park authority to deliver a landscape-scale new community-led lifestyle, and land management and visitor models.
The‘Cairngorms 2030: people and nature thriving together’project has been awarded a possible total of £12,486,100 over the next seven years.
Covering over 4500 km², Cairngorms is the largest national park in the UK, and the project will involve over 45 committed partners working together to“tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis”.
The Cairngorms are home to 25 per cent of all threatened and rare species in the UK, such as capercaillie, wildcats, osprey and golden eagles.
The project will include outdoor health programmes and the creation of a nature-based dementia centre, and will enhance nature through green finance, woodland expansion, peatland restoration, river catchment management, nature friendly farming and sustainable transport.
Twelve jobs will also be created in the area, with the possibility of further recruitment in later phases of the project.
Convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority Cllr Xander McDade said:“We believe that it is only by communities coming together that we can tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis.
“This funding allows us to take forward critical work in communities and landscapes right across the national park, from the creation of a nature-based dementia centre to citizens’assemblies fostering local decisionmaking; from woodland expansion and peatland restoration to nature friendly farming, sustainable transport, green finance, and creating a wellbeing economy.”
The Heritage Horizon Awards were launched in 2019, thanks to funding from National Lottery players, to support ambitious, innovative and transformational projects.