S T A N D I N G W A V E S
It’s a Rapid Education
“Only in Canada, you say? Pity… ” PHOTO KATE DONNELLY
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Madawaska Kanu Centre located near Algonquin Park, offers highly personal instruction from Beginner to Expert levels in both Whitewater Kayaking and Open Canoeing as well as Sea Kayak courses. Weekend and 5-Day Courses.
U.K. STUDY LEAVES PADDLERS PANHANDLING FOR PUT-INS
A SIX-YEAR STUDY in the U.K. concluded that, for the most part, paddling is a crime. Paddlers in England and Wales still have no legal right of access to all but a few indus- trial rivers. Paddlers risk conviction for tres- passing or for criminal damage to spawn- ing beds due to a long-standing quirky law, whereby private landowners also own the water flowing through their properties. For more than 30 years, paddlers have
sought fair access through privately and individually negotiated access agreements. Typically, when paddlers seek permission for river access off private land or to even paddle by, the landowner—if they are in- clined to discuss it at all—usually says no. The few standing agreements that have
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been achieved are usually very restric- tive in regards to access dates, terms and water levels, and the agreements are also liable to be withdrawn at the landowners’ whims. Standing agreements are currently in place for only 800 kilometres of river, about two per cent of the total 65,000 km of rivers in England and Wales. Further, in Wales, there are agreements in place on only 13 of 300 rivers. In 2000, the U.K.’s Department for Envi- ronment, Food and Rural Affairs sponsored
the pivotal river access study which unfor- tunately concluded in October that, “In the vast majority of cases, approaches to secur- ing canoe access by voluntary agreement are successful.” Paddlers are upset over this conclusion, which is contrary to the study’s preliminary findings in 2004 that stated, “Ne- gotiated access agreements alone are un- likely to fully meet the demand and need for canoeable waters.” The British Canoe Union (England) and
Welsh Canoe Association have begun to distance themselves from the failed access agreement strategy and campaign for a change in the law. “The WCA does not accept that further
access to water can be delivered by utiliz- ing the same methods that have failed again and again,” says Ashley Charlwood of the Welsh Canoeing Association. Both bodies hope precedent set in Scot-
land will help their cause. There, the Scot- tish Canoe Association campaigned suc- cessfully to have the right of access to rivers legally enshrined through the Land Reform Act passed in 2003. In the meantime, 1.5 million U.K. paddlers
will be putting in outside the law. —Mark Rainsley
RAPID
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