How the YDGLA Campaigns

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Locally:

• We support the Highway Authority's and the National Park Authority's plans to impose Traffic Restriction Orders on green lanes, and we encourage them to be more ambitious in their plans to restrict, and eventually banish off-roading from the National Park and the Nidderdale AONB.
• We collect data that records the incidence of off-roading and the damage and nuisance that it causes.
• We catalogue the green lanes that either run through, or run close to, sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), and sites of historical and archaeological importance.
• We are starting to ascertain the needs of disabled people who have a special need for access to traffic-free green lanes, for example because there are no stiles to be negotiated, and because the lanes are wide enough, and often not too steep for wheelchairs. Blind and deaf people have an especial need for traffic-free green lanes.
• We press for the prosecution those off-roaders whose activities, even under the present obscure highway laws, are plainly illegal.

Nationally:

· We lobby local MPs and ministers responsible for the countryside, in order to persuade them first, that local authorities should be given more support and encouragement in applying traffic regulation orders to control off-roading, and secondly, that further changes in highway law are necessary.

· We liaise with like-minded groups, both in Yorkshire and in in other parts of the country, who are fighting their own battles against destructive off-roaders. Among these are: GLEAM, the Green Lanes Environmental Action Movement. (www.gleam-uk.org ) GLEAM grew out of campaigns to preserve the ancient Ridgeway in Berkshire from the ravages of off-roaders, and has broadened itself to campaign nationally for restrictions on off-roading. · The Ramblers' Association is also very active in presenting arguments to government concerning the damage and nuisance that off-roaders cause. · TheYorkshire Dales Society works tirelessly for the welfare of the landscape and the culture of the Yorkshire Dales, and has done a great deal to draw attention to the damage that off-roading is doing to green lanes. We helped found the Green Lanes Protection Group, the national coalition of organizations that wanted the NERC bill strengthened, and which was highly successful in conducting the Parliamentary campaign. The Green Lanes Protection Group brought together in common cause, groups that were traditionally suspicious of each other. The prospect of more and more green lanes falling prey to the recreational vehicle lobby propelled landowners, cyclists, walkers and others into a highly-effective coalition.