Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund - Taking Flight (Seabirds)

Taking Flight seeks to fund projects which support progress of key Scottish seabird priority actions, as outlined in the Scottish Seabird Conservation Action Plan (Seabird CAP).

Applications will be assessed on how they demonstrate the extent to which the project will meet the following criteria:

• Planning and Innovation: The project is spatially targeted pilot, trialling or testing techniques, new equipment, and/or novel methods to produce learnings to fill knowledge gaps and support further, scalable implementation.
• Demonstrating Benefits for Seabirds: The project demonstrates the existence of the pressure the project would address, evidences how the approach could help to reduce or eliminate this pressure, and outlines the expected impacts on seabird populations.
• Dissemination of Recommendations: A plan has or will be developed for disseminating project learnings to support collaboration across the sector. This should include outlining the evidence gained through the project, how it has been of benefit to seabirds and the costs associated with delivering it, how the approach could be scaled to a regional or national level, any unintended benefits, any challenges faces and how these were overcome, and the timescales and channels for sharing this information.
• Collaboration and Co-ordination: The project will work collaboratively to increase dialogue and engagement across communities, organisations, sectors, and businesses, and bring new people together in aid of seabird conservation.

Costs that SMEEF will fund include:

• Staffing costs inclusive of salary, National Insurance and Employee Pension Contributions.
• Professional fees that are appropriate and proportionate to the project.
• Travel and subsistence to cover staff and any volunteers supporting the delivery of project activities.
• The costs of monitoring and evaluating project delivery and success, and disseminating project outcomes and learning.
• Irrecoverable VAT.
• Full Cost Recovery expenses under which they will fund a proportionate share of your organisations overheads in addition to direct project costs. Please note that they are unlikely to fund FCR costs which are more than 15% of your total request to SMEEF.

Who can apply?

Applicant(s) must be based in the UK and all projects must be delivered in Scotland. The following types of organisations are eligible to apply:

• Registered charity
• Constituted Community Group
• Community Interest or Benefit Group
• Public body
• Private company
• Academic prganisation
• Partnerships and organisations working collaboratively with others.

How to apply

Submit an expression of interest via their website. If your application has been successful, you will then be invited to submit a full application.

Closing date

Expression of interest closes at 11.59am on Friday 21 August 2026. 

If your expression of interest is successful, you will have from Monday 05 October until Friday 30 October 2026 to submit your full application. 

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