Access to the countryside has been a key issue in conservation in recent years. We have been at the forefront of access research and work on human disturbance to birds. Our research has been the first to model the population consequences of disturbance for a breeding bird species. Footprint Ecology staff have conducted strategic reviews of research on disturbance to birds and we have explored the use of surrogate measures of access (such as housing density) as correlates of disturbance / visitor pressure. With a growing understanding of disturbance issues to birds we have started to focus more on access and visitor surveys, especially with regard to lowland heathland, grassland and coastal habitats. Access to the countryside is essential for people's well being and health, yet can also cause problems where visitor pressure is high. In conjunction with CEH we have been coordinating visitor counts and questionnaire work in a robust and directly comparable way across many heathland sites in southern England. These data enable us to build GIS based models of visitor pressure, allowing us to estimate visitor numbers at sites based on a knowledge of local housing density and the distribution and types of access points. Such modelling has allowed us, as an example, to estimate that the Thames Basin Heaths SPA receives over 5 million visitors per annum, and to map the spatial distribution of this visitor pressure within sites.
Our questionnaire studies have allowed us to explore the reasons people visit sites, how far they go once on sites, how they travel (and how far) to reach such sites and what features attract people to particular areas. Such information is essential to informing policy, planning and access management and Footprint Ecology can play a role at all these level
s. 