General principles
- Successful access control requires a unified strategy determined by site conditions and local patterns of public pressure. Coastal access control usually involves restricting access to sensitive areas, such as unstable foredunes, while channelling people along attractive erosion-resistant routes through or around the restricted areas.
- It is vital for the success of dune restoration schemes to get access working for you, not against you. This means sorting out parking and access first, before doing major planting or fencing work. Otherwise you will be constantly struggling against the force of public pressure and trampling.
- Some parts of the coast withstand public pressure much better than others. Foreshores and beaches can tolerate high densities of people and, where the foreshore is strongly accreting, can even take vehicles without serious damage. Slacks, stable backdunes and dune grasslands withstand more intensive use than exposed dunes near the sea. By allowing relatively free access to seashore and inland ‘buffer zones’, pressure may be relieved on the more sensitive areas between. Selected areas within the buffer zones can be developed as ‘honey pots’ to divert attention from elsewhere. ‘Furniture’ such as picnic tables and children’s play equipment and features such as bare slopes for sliding provide positive inducements for people to stay in a particular area.
- Access control begins at the car park. Its location and capacity, along with any auxiliary (eg roadside) parking, set the approximate maximum number of visitors during peak periods. The first way to reduce pressure is to prevent parking along trackways, and confine it to car parks of a size and design consistent with site requirements. Sometimes existing de facto car parks must be tolerated, but they should be made official by having their boundaries set and signposted.
- Once parking is under control, the main task is to channel people from car parks to the beach. Most visitors are interested in little else, and they will beat their own paths to the sea unless suitably attractive routes are provided.
- Dunes are of secondary interest to most people except on windy days and at high tides when they provide shelter and play areas for children. High dunes may also be used as viewpoints. These needs can be catered for by providing ‘nests’ for family-sized groups, for example by mowing the grass on the lee edges of foredunes and in dry slacks, or by clearing picnic sites within thickets of backdune scrub. Such areas must be sited with care and the paths to and from them should be aligned to limit erosion in the immediate vicinity.
- Existing public rights of way must not be obstructed no matter how convenient this might be from the site manager’s viewpoint. Sometimes routes can be redirected but to do this legally is a slow process and may do more harm than good if it arouses local opposition. It can often be more effective to provide attractively surfaced, landscaped and signposted alternatives to existing rights of way. However, this may cause problems in later years if the new route is also claimed as a right of way.
- Nature trails attract visitors who want general site access, but they create additional pressure where it may have previously been low. Such trails often become eroded around view points. At some coastal sites, such as Braunton Burrows NNR, Devon, nature trails have been tried and abandoned for this reason. Elsewhere, as at Ainsdale Sand Dunes NNR, Merseyside, trails are open only on an advance-booking quota system so that use can be monitored and restricted as necessary. Another approach, as at Oxwich NNR on the Gower Peninsula, is to shift nature trail routes occasionally to ‘rest’ over-used parts of the dunes.
- Access control measures must be in keeping with the character of the environment. Car parks, fences and signposts are often obtrusive on the coast and, particularly in wild and remote areas, erosion may be no more unsightly than controls.
- Access control usually requires back-up in the form of wardening and strong byelaws. Wardens can deal with careless or thoughtless visitors and with egg collectors and poachers who are undeterred by signs and fences. But without byelaws a warden can do little aside from friendly persuasion. On some sites, vandalism and trespass are major problems and wardens are equipped with portable radios. On these sites, too, good relations with the local police are vital so that serious offenders can be prosecuted.
