Tim Bonner: Playing politics in the countryside

Last Friday Green MP Caroline Lucas introduced her 'Right to Roam' Bill in Parliament. It proposes open access to all rivers, woods, grasslands and green belt land. The Countryside Alliance has always encouraged people to visit the countryside and supported the CROW Act which created a right to roam on unenclosed land. Ms Lucas' arguments for her new proposal are, however, illogical and ignore both how much of our countryside is already accessible and the impact of unmanaged access on wildlife and fragile habitats.

A fact which Ms Lucas was not keen to publicise is that England and Wales already have over 140,000 miles of rights of way which give access to rivers, woods, grassland, the green belt and every other aspect of the British countryside. Open any Ordnance Survey map and you will find it criss-crossed with footpaths and bridleways and, as regular users of those paths will know, many of them are lightly used, if they are used at all. There is room for everyone who wants to access the countryside to do so through our existing network and that is something the Alliance is very keen to promote. What we have fundamental concerns about, however, is the impact on wildlife and sensitive habitats of unmanaged access on a much greater scale than is currently the case.

Ironically, just a couple of days after Ms Lucas argued that "a Bill of this kind could not be more urgently needed [as] we are in the midst of an ecological emergency" research was published showing that rising numbers of visitors to Snowdonia National Park has caused a drop in bird numbers and species. The study, commissioned by Natural Resources Wales, the National Trust and the Snowdonia National Park Authority, compared Snowdon in 2020 during lockdown with the situation in 2021 and 2022 when visitors returned in huge numbers. Unsurprisingly a central theme of the report was "a reduced abundance and diversity of birdlife" related to higher visitor numbers alongside increased erosion and more litter. It is simply the reverse of the truth to argue that unmanaged access is good for biodiversity, just as it is dishonest to ignore the grubby and litter strewn consequences of open access in honeypot sites.

Unfortunately for all the talk of biodiversity, wellbeing and immersion in wild places, the clear impression is that Ms Lucas is playing politics in the countryside and that the Bill is underpinned by a very Marxist approach to the very concept of landownership and the abolition of private property. The 'Right to Roam' campaign advocates trespass and despite Ms Lucas' claims that increasing access can help 'solve the ecological crisis' neither she, nor her fellow campaigners pay as much as lip service to the impact human activity has on wildlife and habitats. Indeed, in proposing her Bill, Ms Lucas made a ludicrous comparison between access in Norway which has a population density of 15 people per km2, Sweden which has 25 per km2, Scotland at 70 per km2 and England which has 426 people per km2. In reality, that comparison completely undermines her proposal as the population statistics explain why the current regime in England and Wales, which provides ample opportunity for everyone to access the countryside but also protects special places and wildlife, is exactly the right one for one of the most crowded countries on the planet.