The visitor attraction where visitors will be unwelcome! Is council missing out on huge tourism opportunity?

                                                                         

The new wetlands bird reserve at Pyewipe  is now nearing completion

WORK is now nearing completion on what could be an exciting new all-year tourist attraction on the outskirts of Grimsby.

The hope is that the new nature reserve on land adjacent to the Novartis factory at Pyewipe will be a magnet for hundreds, even thousands, of impressive  wading birds, including godwits, avocets, egrets, curlews, whimbrels, lapwings, redshanks, greenshanks, wood sandpipers and golden plovers.                                          

Greenshank feeding

In time, it might even attract scarce species such as spoonbills and black-winged stilts.

Only problem is that the 35-acre reserve, to be known as Novartis Ings, will be closed to visitors!

Birdwatchers, nature lovers and other  hoping to see the birds will have to get what best views they can from the sea wall.

According to North East Lincolnshire Council, who will manage the wetland haven, it will be a 'mitigation site' -  that is to say, one designed to provide habitat compensation for open land lost elsewhere as  a result of industrial development.

But no provision is being made for visitors.

Access will only be allowed to a handful of researchers for the purpose of counting the birds, identifying the various species and recording them as they come and go.

It will be similar to the Cress Marsh mitigation site established at nearby Stallingborough four years ago.

Says the council: "The site, located aklongside the Humber Estuary, will be providing wet grassland that is in mosaic with a storage lagoon, scrapes, islands and spits, plus slightly higher points to help the birds spot potential predators. 

"Oystercatcher, lapwing, redshank and other waders used to breed in the area but are now very scarce or do not breed at all locally due to a lack of suitable breeding habitat. 

                                       

Lapwing - might it return as a breeding species?

"This new site, though primarily designed for roosting, is likely to provide renewed opportunities for some of these lost breeding waders."

The Grimsby News says: Credit to the council for creating the reserve, but it appears to be missing a massive opportunity. At Frampton Marsh, near Boston  in Lincolnshire and at Titchwell Marsh in North Norfolk, the RSPB has created similar reserves which attract not just thousands of birds but also thousands of visitors. The society has created local employment and ensured that places of conservation are also educational resources and money-spinning tourist attractions. Through artfully laid-out  trails, and discreetly-located observation hides, they have achieved these goals without the slightest disturbance or inconvenience to the birds. Why cannot North East Lincolnshire Council do likewise?  Is it a shortfall  imagination or knowhow? Perfectly understandable, but, if so, why not offer Novartis Ings either to the RSPB or to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, a specialist conservation organisation  whose reserves at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire and nine other UK sites provide a haven for hundreds of thousands of waders, swans, geese plus ducks and also attract more than a million paying visitors per year?