the tourist trap

Setting aside any ecological and aesthetic concerns surrounding the proposal for managed realignment, one issue that’s clearly a weighty item in the arsenal of Rescue the Cuckmere Valley is the question of tourism. And rightly so. The Cuckmere Estuary Partnership can claim what they will about the economic viability of maintaining the sea defences, the rising sea levels resulting from global warming and the importance of salt marshes in a country where such habitat is declining, but if local tourism, and potentially the community that relies on it, really will be destroyed by managed realignment, then it becomes a little less easy to justify for the sake of a few hectares of sodden marshland.

I was quite surprised therefore to stumble upon a 2005 report on the Assessment of Potential Impacts of Managed Realignment which looks specifically at this aspect of the Environment Agency’s proposal for the Cuckmere valley.

What surprised me - though I’ve no real idea why it should - was the discovery that English Nature had commissioned this report. Now some of you may claim that this automatically makes the recommendations biased in their favour. Well ... it’s a compelling claim ... but I have to disagree. After all, if it were true then it doesn’t say much for the professionalism of the company who conducted the report (Risk & Policy Analysts Limited) and from what I can gather they are a very reputable company indeed!

Never-the-less, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions after reading the full report. What follows is a brief extract from their Conclusions and Recommendations:

“The suggested changes to the Cuckmere Valley to provide sustainable flood management within a more natural estuary will change the landscape and the present facilities enjoyed by visitors. However, if the change is properly managed there may be economic advantages to the area. This is predicted to arise because income lost from those visitors that choose not to visit Cuckmere because of the changes to the site following managed realignment may be more than compensated for by additional income from birdwatchers, with this being distributed more evenly throughout the year.”