Dear members of North East Kite Surfers,

I would like to invite you to a focus group to discuss the future management of the Teesmouth and Cleveland Coast European Marine Site.

The Tees Estuary and the adjacent coastal areas of North and South Gare, as well as Hartlepool Headland and Redcar sea front are home to thousands of waterbirds throughout the year which feed on the rocky shoreline and roost along the high tide mark. The site is of international importance. There is evidence that recreational activities are causing disturbance to waterbirds which results in birds taking flight and squandering precious energy, rather than foraging for food or resting. This is especially a problem during the winter months when wintering and migratory birds need to maximise their feeding time because restricted daylight and poor weather.

As project officer I am looking to develop a coastal user forum in which potential management options for recreational activities can be discussed. The aim of the forum is to increase awareness of activities and actions which have negative effects on the conservation value of the site, and in turn encourage users to modify their behaviour which will have positive benefits for themselves and the waterbirds through voluntary measures.

In the longer term we would like to raise the profile of the area and encourage more people to visit the site through publicity on a website and a newsletter. In return for your group agreeing to the voluntary measures we would look to publicise your activity and subsequent events in the area.

The first stage of the engagement process will be a series of focus groups centred on specific recreational activities. I would like to invite you to the water based activity group. I am also looking to invite representatives from Tees Personal Watercraft Club, Tees & Hartlepool Yacht Club, and if possible the RYA regional representative. I am also contacting the British Kite Surfing Association to make them aware of the project. If you know of any others whom you feel should attend the focus group please email me their contact details.

The focus groups will discuss:
•Which areas of the Teesmouth and Cleveland Coast are most important for jet skiers, kite surfers and windsurfers?
•The conservation importance of the area.
•The potential management options for the site, in particular voluntary management measures such as a code of conduct for all coastal users or voluntary zoning of activities.

I am planning to organise the focus groups for the w/c Monday 14 November, Monday 21 November or Monday 28 November most probably at a Redcar location. If you would let me know which evenings are best and I will try to accommodate your preference.

Following the focus group there will be an open meeting in January 2012 where all users will be invited to comment on the outcome of the focus groups.

If you felt it is appropriate please could you copy this email onto your forum to update your members of the plans.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Katherine Simpson

Katherine Simpson
Teesmouth and Cleveland Coast European Marine Site Project Officer
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The focus group meeting date has been set...so if you want to protect our beach access please come along on Monday 28th November, 7pm at the Teesmouth Field Centre, someone with knowledge of wildlife, bird migration etc would be superb but everyone that uses these beaches should come and voice their opinion and share their knowledge.

Teesmouth Field Centre, Hartlepool Power Station, Tees Road, Hartlepool. TS25 2BZ

http://www.teesmouth.freeserve.co.uk/

We like to have the option to kite through the winter, if you feel the same come along.

Jamie and I are attending the focus group meeting on Monday 28th November, 7pm at the Teesmouth Field Centre. The BKSA has been contacted btw.

Contact us to let us know if you can help or can attend. Lets put the work in to make sure we don't have a repeat of what happened at Budle Bay. I'm sure all parties can work together to keep our beaches open.

what a load of rubbish i take it the dogs the walkers and the digger dont scare the birds only big scarry kites. Its not like we are there every day all day either. (There is evidence that recreational activities are causing disturbance to waterbirds which results in birds taking flight and squandering precious energy) i mean shame on us for making a bird fly

Gordon wrote: Its not like we are there every day all day either.

would like to be able to agree with you there haha

Sorry for this rant BUT they must be having a ****** laugh!

How on earth can they justify that we affect the birds. How can the watersports users be disturbing the bloody birds during winter. Do birds not swan if off to a warmer climate during the winter months? Nothing like all industry, massive ships, pilot boots, massive diggers and sirens blasting off every other minute, this obviously has nothing to do with the bloody birds flying of eh....madness!

One more thing, the new development of massive wind turbines off redcar will not scare the birds away, but watersports users are, give it a rest! In all my years of kitesurfing down Teeside, the only birds I have ever seen are the dirty seagulls hovering around the landfill site off the chemworks

Bird watchers and twitchers boil my blood, how an earth does kitesurfing affect the birds. If someone who was blind was to walk down the beach, wouldn’t have a clue if we were there or not because we do not make a noise at all, well except for some random people shouting HOULIE every now and again! These people are just trying to spoil everybody’s enjoyment cause they all think we should be watching the birds - for god sake man!

I have taken a new role on since the summer, I believe it is my duty to honk my car horn every time i see a twitcher watching a bird at the side of road. I am afraid this may scare the birds off so they better start thinking about banning us road users!

What a bloody Pi$$ take!!

Ill try and make it down to the meeting cause I have plenty to say.......

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew McMillan wrote:Sorry for this rant BUT they must be having a ****** laugh!

How on earth can they justify that we affect the birds. How can the watersports users be disturbing the bloody birds during winter. Correct me if I am wrong, but do they (birds and twitchers) not swan if off to a warmer climate? Nothing like all industry, massive ships, pilot boots, massive diggers and sirens blasting off every other minute, this obviously has nothing to do with the bloody birds flying of eh....madness!

One more thing, the new development of massive wind turbines off redcar will not scare the birds away, but watersports users are, give it a rest! In all my years of kitesurfing down Teeside, the only birds I have ever seen are the dirty seagulls hovering around the landfill site off the chemworks

Bird watchers and twitchers boil my blood, how an earth does kitesurfing affect the birds. If someone who was blind was to walk down the beach, wouldn’t have a clue if we were there or not because we do not make a noise at all, well except for some random people shouting HOULIE every now and again! These people are just trying to spoil everybody’s enjoyment cause they all think we should be watching the birds - for god sake man!

I have taken a new role on since the summer, I believe it is my duty to honk my car horn every time i see a twitcher watching a bird at the side of road. I am afraid this may scare the birds off so they better start thinking about banning us road users!

What a bloody Pi$$ take!!

Ill try and make it down to the meeting cause I have plenty to say.......

Cheers
Andrew

Did you really mean "correct me if I'm wrong" ,because you are (well partly anyway some piss off others come in). Fine to have a rant, plenty of twitchers doing that about us kitesurfers, but at a public consultation an uneducated rant might not do us any favours.

Fair point......I have changed it.

I would love to know which sports they are aiming this at - any idea?

As you can tell I am quite annoyed about this but as always there is two sides to every debate

It affects all water users, if you kayak, sail, sup, surf, jet ski, winch, skinny dip or even walk your dog around the mentioned areas it's for you.

Just a side note but I have noticed a massive increase in the amount of people parking up on the side of the road to view/picture/film the wildlife. The bridge is packed with people watching seals sunning themselves at HW and birds over the wetlands. Massive lenses, tripods and hiviz jacket everytime I go past. It must be hard to get a shot of the birds with all the pipeline that crosses the area. The seals are cool though and many of you will know about them if you kite at the Chem. Darth Vader last week!

Over the road from the Zinc Works rd entrance to Chem is the huge refuse site were all the gulls feed because it is not netted. To drive those diggers must be horrible, hundreds of birds circling around your cab! I have seen camera crews there two or three times, it's like a scene from war of the worlds.

We had a late sesh last week and it was dark when we finished. The moon, factory lights, trucks lights, office lights, noise from all the industry, the pilots bringing in a huge ship and the fire in the sky lighting the lagoon, good sesh.

Lets tell people how how environmentally friendly we all are and keep our beach access open.

I would imagine kitesurfing will get the biggest drilling in terms of sports. Mainly becasue people generally don't understand the sport and because our sport takes us directly to the feeding areas of the birds, i.e. the shoreline, shallow water and estury.

My humble opinion with some background

I've been birding that whole area for about 25 years, kitesurfing it for about the last 7.

Do we disturb the birds? 'Course we bloody do. I've lost count of the times I've been walking down to the water with the kite and thought "Sh*t I didn't get the chance to see what was in that flock I've just flushed", and I've also seen plenty of other kiters do the same. I find it amusing that some kitesurfers, who must know perfectly well it's nearly impossible, under any circumstances, to approach a flock of birds without flushing them, think they aren't going to flush them if they're attached to a kite. The actual kite being the issue though is pretty ludicrous. I doubt very much that waders which can tell the difference between a Peregrine (eats waders so scares them off) and a Buzzard (doesn't eat waders and they'll sit all day next to one) somehow mistake a 12m piece of fabric as a predator. Birds just don't like humans approaching them, full stop.
Does that mean we shouldn't be allowed to kitesurf? It bloody well better not. If people have a hobby they should be able to enjoy it. Birdwatchers (me again) have a right to be able to enjoy the birds but they have to realise kitesurfers have a right to enjoy the wind and coast too, along with eveyone else whos hobby / passion takes them to the beach. Birders are not more important (but they do have a bigger gang).
We're certainly not the only ones disturbing birds though. Normally after a session at paddies or the Gare I'll spend an hour or two birding, and the most disturbance I see is from the dog walkers. They walk the entire length of the shoreline flushing everything every five metres or so with dogs actively harrasing the birds; whereas we all tend to enter the water at a similar spot, then head out a bit deeper and cause less disturbance once out there, only infrequently having to do the walk of shame back up wind. Should we ban dog walkers? I'd love to say yes but I know people love to walk their dogs along a beach.
The next worst are probably the birdwatchers themselves who, now that the majority have taken up digital photography, are incessent on getting as close as they can to birds for that perfect picture, and actively going into the habitats where they will find (and inevitably disturb) them. I've disturbed a hell of a lot more birds birding than I have kiting. The habitat we Kiters spend most of our time in ( the sea) I don't think will be raised as an issue for feeding and roosting birds.

soem good points there adam, will you be able to make the meeting ? as it seems you have good knowledge from both sides

I have an idea, lets ban water sports and sit in front of the TV and become over weight.

This then costing the NHS money as we all become morbidly obese.

Evolutionkites wrote:In the longer term we would like to raise the profile of the area and encourage more people to visit the site

surely encouraging more people to visit the site will increase the effect on the birds.

we already have one site that is unusable during the winter due to birds, is it fair that we should be restricted as to where we can go and when on our own coastline, I know for a fact that there are an awful lot of other activities that people do which affect the environment and birds a hell of a lot more than kitesurfing, the impact we have on the environment is minimal compared to other things.

whilst i appreciate that we will have some effect on birds there are plenty of other people that have a damn site bigger effect than us lot

My Blood is boiling reading that!
First thought was who is this woman and should we even be giving her any credance by attending. Having found and read thier report - http://www.inca.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/marine-site.pdf
I think it is important that we do attend but more important that we are prepared and organised, have a designated speaker and a clear agenda or list of points to raise and questions to ask? Maybe we should meet to discuss beforehand?

Has anyone spoke to the BKSA about it already?

Addstarr wrote:The next worst are probably the birdwatchers themselves who, now that the majority have taken up digital photography, are incessent on getting as close as they can to birds for that perfect picture, and actively going into the habitats where they will find (and inevitably disturb) them. I've disturbed a hell of a lot more birds birding than I have kiting. The habitat we Kiters spend most of our time in ( the sea) I don't think will be raised as an issue for feeding and roosting birds.

From the report -

(6.6) Bird watching - Significant Effect Potential o Not expected
(6.9) Wind/Kite surfing -
Significant Effect Potential o Disturbance to birds feeding in coastal waters and displacement from feeding
areas and roosting sites.

Theres a suprise

Addstarr your knowledge is exactly what we need.

" a beach management strategy is under production by R&CBC........"