RANGER / WARDEN
In 2010 Dave Miller was appointed as Coastal Action Zone Ranger with responsibly for providing ranger duties on the Seacroft area of Gibraltar Point SSSI i.e. meeting site users, both local community and holiday visitors, providing a range of site interpretation for visitors and dealing with site conflict issues. Additionally he would be recruiting and inducting volunteers, undertaking training needs, assessments and skills analysis and managing a training programme for each volunteer.
Over the 3 year contract Mr Miller made a great impression on the site and together with volunteers significantly improved a number of habitats. Illegal camping was more or less eliminated and other issues were quickly dealt with.
Not all of Dave Miller's actions had a positive effect on Seacroft as the publicity he gained in an attempt to stop what he wrongly called "dogging" has tainted the reputation of the area and those articles claiming it to be a "dogging hotspot" will remain on the internet perhaps forever. It was probably a first for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust for one of their wardens to advise the public not to take their children to a nature site that they were overseeing. I am not sure exactly what he claims to have seen with his own eyes but most evidence was very much anecdotal and the rest probably down to homophobic fantasies.
Dave Miller
Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust
Coast & Wash Warden
Mr Miller helped the District Council with their plan to destroy the Sea Buckthorn habitats on the outer and central dunes.
His legacy will not only be the entire change of character of the site with the loss of most of the wildlife but the ongoing blight to the local reputation of Seacroft with his ill-advised publicity campaign wrongly designating it as one of the counties premier "dogging hot spots".
In October 2013 a new contract was established with Dave Miller having a much wider brief as Coast and Wash Warden for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and it is regretted that the Trust's involvement with Seacroft is now limited to a watching brief.
With the weakening of a Warden presence and no appetite to progress the LNR Declaration by East Lindsey District Council, Natural England or Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, opportunity to strengthen protection of the rare habitats forming Seacroft Marsh SSSI have been allowed to drift into obscurity.
Sadly in October 2014 the District Council adopted a plan proposed by Natural England that would not only permanently alter the character of the site but destroy essential habitats and substantially reduce the number of mammals, birds and invertebrates. This destruction began on 14 JANUARY 2015.
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