January is a quiet month for NEWT as far as days out with clients go, but it’s been an incredibly busy month for other reasons.<\/p>\n
The threat to tourism services in Northumberland, following public sector spending cuts and the impending closure of One Northeast, have occupied a lot of my time.\u00a0 As Chair of SENTA (Southeast Northumberland Tourism Association) and also Outdoors Northumberland (until last Monday when I stepped down at our AGM), as well as being\u00a0part of Northumberland Tourism’s ‘Ambassadors’ group, I’ve been involved in meetings and discussions about where we go from this point on.\u00a0 I’m not going to go into great detail here, as there are many issues to deal with before the position that will be adopted by Northumberland’s tourism businesses is resolved enough to be made public.<\/p>\n
The other big meeting this week was the latest NE regional hub meeting for Netgain (the North Sea Marine Conservation Zones Project).\u00a0 Along the Northumberland Coast, and in our offshore waters, we have some stunning wildlife and habitats.\u00a0 The Farne Islands and Druridge Bay are places that we’ve enjoyed so much wildlife with our clients and the North Sea itself has produced encounters with rare, elusive and iconic creatures on our pelagic trips for many years now.\u00a0 With so many different interests represented on the regional hub, there were always going to be conflicts (of ideology and interests, rather than personal conflict between hub members thankfully).\u00a0 The only way forward will be through concensus and that requires a certain amount of give and take by everyone involved.\u00a0 The Netgain team have done a fantastic job of managing the discussions, providing the mapping data that hub members have asked for and answering some often difficult, and contentious, questions.<\/p>\n
I care passionately about tourism in Northumberland, and I’m sure that any regular reader of our blog will know my feelings about the North Sea, so I’ll keep doing all I can to help move both of those projects towards a sensible solution.\u00a0 Ultimately though, we’re a conservation-minded tourism business so I’ll be seeking solutions that have the best interests of tourism businesses and the marine environment at their core.<\/p>\n
I even managed a couple of hours birdwatching earlier this week as well; a successful trip to see the Hawfinch<\/em><\/strong> at Mitford was followed by a walk across some exposed moorland where I was entertained by 2\u00a0Red Foxes<\/em><\/strong> as they bounded through a patch of heather like a couple of spring lambs.\u00a0 Invigorating and stimulating, and across the coastal plain of central and southeast Northumberland I could see the sea with the full moon rising over it.\u00a0 A truly magical\u00a0 moment that reminded me where my passion comes from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January is a quiet month for NEWT as far as days out with clients go, but it’s been an incredibly busy month for other reasons. The threat to tourism services in Northumberland, following public sector spending cuts and the impending closure of One Northeast, have occupied a lot of my time.\u00a0 As Chair of SENTA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,11,105,5,141,139,104],"tags":[52,440,439,441,443,847,442],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-farnes","category-north-sea","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","category-southeast-northumberland","category-surveys","tag-birdwatching-northumberland","tag-hawfinch","tag-netgain","tag-north-sea-marine-conservation-zones-project","tag-outdoors-northumberland","tag-red-fox","tag-senta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}