Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England

What is it about?

The European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a piece of legislation aimed at improving the status of water bodies. In a nutshell, the WFD aims to restore inland and coastal waters to a more natural state, similar to that before modification by humans. Recently, it has been suggested that such improvements may improve the value of water bodies for recreation. In this paper, we tested this assumption by looking for an association between WFD water status and use of water bodies for recreation (walking, boating, fishing and swimming) in England. Surprisingly, there was little evidence that people prefer to do these activities in better quality water. Perhaps other factors such as infrastructure or ingrained habits drive people's choices for recreational locations?

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Why is it important?

We suggest that arguments about how the WFD might improve cultural ecosystem service provision (recreation, in particular) are perhaps unfounded. We encourage consideration of whether this really is a goal of the WFD, and if so how we can ensure it is achieved - it doesn't seem to just happen!