Pembrokeshire eyes coasteering rules
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is proposing a licensing scheme for coasteering — the guided mix of rock‑hopping, jumping and swimming — to protect wildlife and regulate operators. (BBC News: licensing plan and wildlife protection rationale) (bbc.co.uk).
Pembrokeshire is where coasteering was born in the 1980s, and now the sport’s best-known stretch of coast could start turning away commercial trips from some sites if wildlife checks show too much damage. (yahoo.com) The new plan comes from Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, which voted on March 25 to introduce a licensing scheme for commercial coasteering on land it owns or leases, with a target start date of May 1, 2026. (pembrokeshirecoast.wales) Coasteering is the guided mix of swimming, scrambling over rocks, and jumping from cliffs into the sea, and Pembrokeshire turned it into a tourism business long before most people outside Wales had heard the word. (yahoo.com) For years, the park and other landowners relied on voluntary rules like the Pembrokeshire Marine Code, which asks activity groups to avoid disturbing seals, seabirds, and sensitive coastal habitat. (pembrokeshireoutdoors.org.uk) That informal system is now being replaced because the park says the number of operators has changed over time and complaints in the last two years showed the limits of a handshake-style arrangement. (pembrokeshirecoast.wales) Under the new setup, operators would need a £100 licence to run commercial trips on park-owned or park-leased routes, and each route would need to pass an environmental assessment before it stays open. (nation.cymru) If a route fails that assessment, the park says commercial coasteering would not be licensed there, which means the change is not just paperwork but a map that could shrink in wildlife-sensitive spots. (pembrokeshirecoast.wales) One reason this is happening is Ceibwr Bay, where Natural Resources Wales published a 2024 breeding bird survey that recommended better education for activity groups and a temporary exclusion zone near nests after looking at disturbance to seabirds. (naturalresourceswales.gov.uk) The park is not acting alone here, because most coasteering in Pembrokeshire happens on land owned or managed by either the national park or the National Trust, and the park’s report says the National Trust supports the move to direct licensing. (pembrokeshirecoast.wales) So the fight is no longer over whether coasteering belongs in Pembrokeshire, because it plainly does; it is over who gets to run trips, on which exact routes, and how much wildlife disturbance the coast will tolerate in the place that invented the sport. (yahoo.com)
