By GEOFF VIVIAN
The man in charge of marine parks in WA is reassuring people that there will be no changes to four-wheel-driving on beaches as part of the South Coast Marine Park.
Luke Bentley, who was in Esperance this week to launch the marine park community information centre, said there would also be no new restrictions imposed on people who walk their dogs on beaches.
He said some beach fishing would be allowed opposite sanctuary zones, but it was yet to be decided where people could, and could not, fish from beaches.
“People will see, when they look at the maps, there’s offsets where sanctuary zones start 200 metres offshore,” he said.
“As part of the public submissions we’ve asked the community to come back and identify those areas we’ve missed in this initial assessment.
“Then we can work through to them with further offsets from the beach to allow for beach fishing.”
Mr Bentley would not be drawn on the question as to whether fishing would be banned outright from any beaches.
“Everything’s open at the moment,” he said.
“We want to make sure we’ve got it right in terms of what information we’ve built into the maps at this stage here and what have we potentially missed.”
