Recreation Management Strategy Survey / England Coast Path NFNPA July 2017

Recreation Management Strategy Survey

Brevity required here dictates some bluntness, so I won’t speak at length about the fuzziness of a survey with canned answers, two tweets worth of space for comment on complex issues. Our main concern is the cart firmly misplaced before the pony. A clear example from the “Join the Debate” page which asks for our help to:

• “provide the best recreational experience for local people and our visitors”
• “protect the very thing people come to see – the spectacular, yet fragile landscape which is a haven for many rare wildlife species” [*]

You can’t promise the best recreational experience, or do a survey which at least in part is a call for a wish list for recreational interests, with the implication demand could be met, when you still haven’t determined what level of recreation is appropriate. The purpose of this exercise is to develop and implement a Recreation Management Strategy, not a Recreation Delivery Menu. Apt messages on the “Putting the Forest First” page should have been incorporated into the survey where they might have a chance of being read.

What we’d like to see first is an accounting on the current Management Strategy: which of the goals have had little or nothing done? Many targets are driven not by public demand, but from statutory obligations to the habitats and to the working Forest, and should not change. We need more focus on practical, achievable goals. The main way we can control where recreation happens within the forest is where people park and camp.

A worthwhile exercise could start by pointing to the Crown Lands as a National Nature Reserve, a Working Farm and Forest, and ask “what activities are appropriate there”, “in order to protect such a place, what are you willing to do differently or do without?”

The NFA hope to be able to support this Authority in its efforts to Manage Recreation, but we need to see a clearer indication of leadership that delivers the more difficult purposes of the Park, instead of focusing on the path of least resistance offered by the last and least, “enjoy”.

England Coast Path

Legislation has mandated the England Coast Path, which in other regions may provide useful alternative recreation, pleasant views and tourist destinations. For the New Forest it will serve to invite more disturbance into our most precious coastal habitats (a nearly uninterrupted series of highly designated and protected zones of international importance).

There is no funding for mitigation and little regard for infrastructure; some stretches, near or on small country lanes in the most remote parts of our coast, precisely where we wouldn’t want to exacerbate the verge parking problem.

The Ordnance Survey will inaccurately show spreading room (the entire seaward side of the path) as accessible, disregarding the need to delineate excluded areas (as much of our coast will be). Arguments will be had with visitors assured by the allegedly definitive map that they (and their pets) may trespass on bird nesting grounds regardless of what the signs say.

We hope the authority will resist the worst excesses of this arbitrary unnecessary exercise.

ADDENDUM:

Please note, if time allowed I’d add many provisos pointing to some more positive examples of work which we support.

We are disappointed in many of the failures to act on the current strategy. Despite the prescription from the SAC Management Plan for removal, we still have campsites destroying Ancient and Ornamental Woodland, the campsite survey showed these have less than half the canopy they ought, and this Authority’s Landscape Action Plan doesn’t even have the word campsite in it, let alone a consideration of their impact. Even a straightforward assessment of car parking provision, which we’ve spec’ed out as not particularly costly, has not been done.

Credible enforcement of any rules developed, or even the existing byelaws, would require an investment in personnel that may not find funding, although we hope our support of the Ranger programme is a start.

A huge wave of development is proposed on our borders, given little strategic consideration for the Park, unreasonable housing targets from Central Government for all local authorities, token mitigation which does not adequately reflect the value of the Forest, we’ve little hope for avoiding a substantial increase of recreational activity that will be dumped on the Forest. The Forest is under a palpable threat. So forgive us for not mincing words in pursuit of brevity.

[*] Editor’s (sour) note : “the spectacular, yet fragile landscape which is a haven for many rare wildlife species” is a very underwhelming description for highly protected habitats and ecosystems – this suggests a pretty place that a handful of rare things happen to live in. The Forest is a mosaic of habitats, many of which have dwindled to nearly nothing in the rest of the UK. It is the entire precious fabric of these ecosystems which needs our protection, not merely a few birds and lizards. It is a last stand for many habitats and species.