Labour would extend right to wild camp to all English national parks
Labour would extend right to wild camp to all English national parks
Move comes as campaigners call for wider access to land after court of appeal ruling on Dartmoor case says activity is lawful
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ruling on the appeal, Sir Geoffrey Vos, the master of the rolls, said wild camping counted as “open-air recreation” as allowed in the 1985 Dartmoor Commons Act.
The shadow environment minister, Alex Sobel, said: “Labour would legislate so that people visiting national parks have the right to wild camp, as well as expanding public access to woodlands and waterways.”
Similar models that enshrine the right to wild camp as part of a broader freedom to roam exist in Europe.
“Recognising the long tradition of this low-impact way of accessing and enjoying our protected landscapes, Campaign for National Parks believes there is a case for the creation of a rights-based approach to leave-no-trace wild camping on open access land in National p arks (England and Wales),” he said, “This would be contingent on the successful completion of trials to assess the impact of wild camping on communities and the local environment.
“As a minimum, this can be achieved through amending Crow to include wild camping as permissible outdoor recreation, with an accompanying responsible access code of conduct.”
We have an aim we would like to see in manifestos that every school child should have a right to have a night under the stars in a national park near to them, so they would realise from a young age why these landscapes are precious.
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You guys have twice the population and a 1/10th the land area of us Canadians and yet we need day and overnight passes for our national parks that we can only obtain through a lottery system 😭