SIR — At the recent Exmoor Society Spring Conference "Exmoor's Rivers", a large audience enjoyed a whole series of very good talks.

Time and again it was mentioned how unique a place Exmoor is for visitors or what a privilege it is to live locally.

The whole entity of open space, beautiful landscape, the 35 miles of coast with freshest of unpolluted Atlantic air and precious wildlife havens all over makes it this lovely site indeed.

Surely the small gurgling streams and the bigger rivers like the Lyn, Exe and Barle are nothing else than spectacular lifelines. But do we really care enough to keep these features safe?

Exmoor National Park was created over 50 years ago. Within the park there are quite a number of especially designated areas of conservation like Sites of Specific Scientific Interest, Sites of Area Conservation and National Nature Reserves.

With all their unique botanical features, these centres of outstanding beauty should be also the centres of thriving wildlife species.

These centres are most attractive for visitors and locals alike in which to spend a lot of their spare time; some of them are like honeypots attracting large numbers of people who enjoy and are encouraged to get active recreation.

Thirty years ago the car park above Tarr Steps was a smallish gravelled area; today it is a fine tarmacam public pay car park with modern facilities and some 110 spaces. On any nice day from March to October this car park is very often overflowing before noon.

The pressure of the public on the River Barle near the ancient monument and world famous Tarr Steps clapper bridge and all along the spectacular circular walk on either bank is enormous.

There is no doubt that this river stretch is one of the nicest in England. There is wildlife in this river and along the banks, but there used to be considerably more of it when I saw it 30 years ago for the first time.

Nowadays it is very common to see people active in the river all over the place and great numbers of dogs enjoying retrieving or splashing through all pools.

But it is not a public playground for everybody to behave like an elephant in a porcelain shop. Unfortunately there are other honeypots on Exmoor where similar behaviour occurs.

All these NNR, SAC and SSSI areas are managed by Natural England. Each SSSI has its own lists of potentially damaging operations ( OLDSI list ).

For the River Barle this list includes "Use of vehicles or craft" and "Recreational or other activities except the legal use of existing Public Rights of Way."

Thus there is no right at all to leave the trails and enter the river; also not for dogs.

It dismays me that on the whole of Exmoor so far there is not one single sign from Natural England alerting the public to these conservation areas.

It seems to me that Natural England officers are sitting too long in Taunton being busy with themselves and their computers. There is not one officer doing any sort of controlling on site.

Let us think and do more about the damage being done to our precious wildlife and habitat. Once lost it is mostly unreplaceable and we have already lost too much.

The depletion is hardly visible to the day tourist nor to those indifferent to nature's beauty. However, it is sadly noticed by this deeply concerned riparian.

Dr Ueli Zellweger,

Winsford.