Land management and outdoor recreation in the UK

This chapter explores the purposes of some of the main UK land users and considers the nature of conflicts between these purposes and outdoor recreation. It considers various approaches and management tools that have been successfully applied to mitigate conflicts between outdoor recreationalists and other land users. The relationship between outdoor recreationists and other land users in the United Kingdom has been, and continues to be, contentious. Inevitably, land ownership rights and multifunctionality have led to conflict between user groups, such as outdoor recreationalists. Agriculture dominates land use, occupying 69.1 per cent of the land area. Forestry Commission land is designed to provide timber, conservation, amenity and recreation as laid down by the Helsinki Accords in 1993. In the UK, regulatory control can be used only when a single landowner exists for a site, as in the case of afforested areas and water supply estates or, at the very highest level of statutory legislation, through the RoW network.