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I am concerned about the
latest transport proposals for Snowdonia.
Snowdonia is visited by
numerous ornithologist/birdwatchers, both day visitors and for overnight
stays. They come primarily to see mountain species such as peregrine, merlin,
raven, chough, ring ousel, twite and dottrel.
Other target species
include goshawk, dipper, goosander, red-breasted merganser, whooper swan and
more recently the red kite.
Unlike most wetland,
woodland and coastal species the majority of these birds do not congregate
at favourite haunts like lakes, estuaries or sea cliffs. They are
wide-ranging species distributed thinly, and often irregularly throughout
the uplands.
In order to see these
birds, visitors need to make frequent stops, often stopping to watch a bird
seen initially from the car. In
other instances longish walks are needed before returning to the car to
drive on to see another single species.
If birders are to achieve their objectives, and have a worthwhile
visit to Snowdonia they need to make several stops during the day.
Frequently such visitors
will make a through trip leaving the Park many miles from where they entered
it. The latest park and ride scheme will be detrimental to such
visitors, many of whom would turn to Cumbria or Derbyshire for their
particular form of recreation.
A
number of local ornithologists would also suffer from the proposals in that
they frequently will ‘nip-out’ to monitor a particular individual pair
of birds, or look for ‘collection points’ as birds congregate prior to
migration. These activities would also be very difficult to accomplish were
car access to be restricted.
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