Easter is here, often marking the start of a busy spring season for Burton Mere Wetlands. As migrant birds roll in, bluebells bloom and – hopefully, at least – the weather warms and dries up a bit, inevitably people want to spend more time immersed in the joys of nature at a welcoming reserve like ours.
However, the team have somewhat appreciated the slight March lull after an incredibly busy second half of the winter, as some of you will have noticed if you visited since the turn of the year. It’s a wonderful feeling to be so popular and our winter bird spectacles are up there with the best, but we are beginning to experience an increase of pressure on our car park capacity.
There have been murmurings that this is all down to the long-awaited opening of our café in late autumn but in reality, we have just finally fully recovered from the impact on footfall caused by the pandemic, and then the disruption of the café build. Being identified by the RSPB as one of the handful of reserves to sustain a new cafe was testament to the growing success of the low key food and drink offer in our visitor centre, along with our consistent year-round footfall. Additionally, ensuring the cafe is within the reserve, available to visitors rather than passers-by, was to do with protecting our car park capacity from overwhelming demand.
In the year preceding the first Covid lockdown, there were a growing number of days when Burton Mere Wetlands’ car park reached full capacity. This was usually a result of a combination of factors coinciding, namely rare birds on the reserve, high tides drawing birdwatchers from far afield, good weather or school holidays meaning an influx of various visitor types at once.
And therein lies the conundrum; how do we address a problem that has so many variables out of our control?
After four disrupted years, our visitor numbers have now returned to the level they were in 2019-20. Due to the mild winter, January and February were exceptionally busy months for us especially by recent standards. “But it’s been so wet”, I hear you say. True indeed, but what we’ve seen is the often brief, dry spells between periods of rain this winter, resulted in the reserve being overly busy, with more people trying to visit than the site has capacity for. Or more accurately, more vehicles than the reserve has capacity for.
Our car park is a good size; 80 spaces including the five accessible blue badge ones. Most days, this is ample and spaces turn over perfectly with the average visitor dwell time on the reserve being between two to three hours rather than a destination that people tend to spend the full day.
We know, and regret, that the reserve is not well served by public transport, meaning a car is the most feasible means of reaching the reserve for many. However, what we see often is a high degree of single occupancy of the vehicles arriving at the reserve. We also notice, and relish the fact, that many visitors use the reserve as a social meeting point, arranging to coincide a visit with friends or family.
And this is where you, our lovely, loyal visitors can take some pressure off the reserve team in spending less time managing the car park which could be better spent on other duties.
A culture of car sharing, by visitors making planned trips to meet kith and kin who travel from similar locales, would mean fewer instances of the car park reaching full capacity, and reduce the rare – but recently growing – need for staff to apologetically turn cars away due to having nowhere to park them.
Although certain factors - high tide periods and school holidays - can be planned for, weather conditions and bird spectacles are much more difficult. It is worth bearing in mind that if you set out to visit on a glorious sunny day, particularly after a period of inclement weather, there is a chance that the car park could be full when you arrive. Whilst car sharing is simply not feasible for everyone, even if a handful of people each day consider trying it, the benefit to the site and other visitors could be significant. Certainly though, for the regular organised groups that visit us, this is something we would like to encourage.
In the short term, a revamp of the existing car park is planned for later in the spring, reinstating bay markers to ensure vehicles are parked efficiently and even potentially creating a couple of additional spaces. Longer term, extending the car park size and capacity is in our vision, but the substantial funding for such a project is not something that is imminently available within the RSPB.
We are already doing as much as possible to maximise visitor capacity, by parking staff and volunteer cars efficiently in non-public areas. Some of the reserve team cycle here, helping to reduce the number of vehicles around. And hopefully, the fact we have entered the spring-summer months with evening access after the facilities close, extending the time for people to visit within - currently until 6pm, extending to 8pm on Monday 1 April - will further improve the situation as people are not confined to all visiting in the same eight hours of daylight available in winter.
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