Motorised tourism on green lanes

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Driving a 4x4 or riding a motorbike or quad purely for pleasure is legal on around 80 routes in the Lakes - but just because it's legal it doesn't mean it's right. 

 

The landscape of the Lake District is not a blank canvas for all kinds of activities, motorised or unmotorised. To residents, particularly farmers, and visitors alike it provides essential benefits - what ecologists call ecosystem services.

 

Natural England’s website has a detailed description of these services for all areas of the Lake District. These, for instance, are what the Cumbria High Fells provide us with:

 

• Sense of place and of history - a strong and revitalising sense of place

 

• Inspiration - as well as individual inspiration this area has been influential in the birth and development of the Picturesque, Romantic and conservation movements as well as British rock climbing.

 

• Tranquillity - large areas are still undisturbed and remote

 

• Biodiversity - this is the most biologically diverse upland area in England. Some of it is of international importance for its habitats and associated species, including lakes, tarns, rivers, woodland, hay meadows, purple moor grass pasture and the diverse mosaic of vegetation communities on the fells.

 

• Geodiversity – the Cumbria High Fells have 48 sites of national importance for geodiversity. These consist of natural outcrops and river sections as well as man-made exposures. It is of particular importance for mineralisation, including disused quarries and dumps associated with mineral workings and mines.

 

For our own health and wellbeing and for that of future generations endangering these services would be utterly irresponsible. It would also be in contravention of our targets for nature recovery: the UK Government, has made international commitments to protect 30 per cent of land and seas by 2030. National Parks must be trailblazers in the country’s effort to reach this target.

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As a policy paper on the Defra website puts it:

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“Taking the value of the services we get from nature into account in your decisions isn’t an ‘optional extra’, it is central to the Government’s aim to achieve a healthy natural environment by putting it at the heart of policy making.”

 

Below is the evidence that's needed to make Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) - the very evidence used successfully by other National Parks.