Our Environmental Policy

Our environmental ethos and how we look after the environment at Reiff Beach Cottage

Our Blue Green outlook

It is a huge privilege to live on the shoreline of The Wester Ross Marine Protected Area. Behind the creation of the MPAs are decades of work by campaigners and marine scientists. To see more about the creation of Wester Ross's MPA please watch a film made by Reiff Beach Cottage's owner Sara, explaining the Marine Protected Area. The link is on the National Trust for Scotlands website about Marine Protected Area's and also here.

The Bountiful Sea: the story of the Wester Ross Marine Protected Area (director’s cut) on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/163831259

In the cottage information book we share ways you can help us protect the sea - and boost not just the health of our planet but our own health too. The seas are drowning in rubbish and balloons, straws and plastic bags can be particularly harmful to sea mammals.

Picking up your rubbish and ensuring none of it blows into the sea from dustbins (use rubbish bags rather than loose rubbish and tie the bags securely and when windy put a rock on top of the bin to stop rubbish been blown) is one simple act of kindness to the sea mammals and sea creatures who ingest plastic bags and bottles that blow into the sea. Picking up the plastic gun wads that recreational shooting club leave on the Island can help too. These can be blown into the loch and end up in the stomachs of turtles, porpoise and dolphin.

Asking fish mongers, restaurants, cafe's and supermarkets if their prawns are creel caught and scallops hand dived, and the fish is from a local and sustainable source (I tend not to include open cage salmon farms under the word sustainable as they are not) is a way to use our consumer power to vote for change for the sake of future generations.

Equally for one's own health and the health of the rivers and oceans and creatures within them - buying eco-household products is a must to reduce the chemicals in the ecosystem as well as those we ingest!

Sea Change Wester Ross

Sea Change Wester Ross, is a group the cottage owner helps coordinate. It is a group of committed local people who live along the coast of the Marine Protected Area and work to encourage the restoration of the habitats and species as well as foster greater education and awareness of the sea and sustainably caught sea food.

Sea Change campaigned successfully to have dredgers banned from the MPA and are now working to implement a community-fishermen led sea bed survey to baseline map the whole MPA area. Sea Change will be making films of our survey findings to show the public the extraordinary species and science research being done within the MPA - as well as celebrate the beauty of life beneath the waves.

Please do get in touch if you're interested in taking part (snorkel, kayak, sailing) or want to know more about dive and snorkel trails. We hope to create a sea festival to celebrate the Marine Protected Area and the sustainable low impact fisheries and sea food coming from within it.

For more information on Sea Change visit our facebook page and blog site.

Sea Change Wester Ross - See "About" for information on the group.
https://www.facebook.com/SeaChangeWR/

About Us - Sea Change Wester Ross
http://seachangewesterross.co.uk/about-us/

More information about our Blue-Green policy and how we do our best to be kind to our planet is in the house book.