droid said:
Climbing takes place on cliffs, in the open air (sorry :-[ ) and very visibly. Any landowner
can control approach. The affected area is the cliff and a small area above and below the cliff. So breaches of access agreements are easily spotted.
That's a different (and therefore interesting) change from the usual argument that caves are different because they are _easier_ to control (since entrances are easily blocked).
Caves are (to the landowner) randomly situated over their land, often in productive areas. Each cave may have it's own approach. This is much more difficult to monitor and control, and the problems may be very specific to any one landowner.
Hence the proliferation of ACBs and access conditions.
You are not comparing like with like.
They aren't quite the same thing, I would agree. But there are still similarities - fundamentally it still involves negotiating access with landowners.
I suspect there are far, far more climbing areas than caves in the UK most are in the 'wilder' areas - you don't tend to have the oddities like Singing River Mine or Robinson's Pot. But there are plenty of access conditions and issues. For example, Cheddar has extensive (and complicated) access conditions. Climbers have access to Fairy Cave quarry but with different conditions to the cavers. A large fraction of sea (and some inland) cliffs have seasonal bird restrictions which are both voluntary and widely obeyed (and much more common in my experience than seasonal bat restrictions). Access was recently in jeopardy at Almscliffe because of boulderers climbing at night against the landowner's explicit request, despite considerable BMC publicity. Bolting can be even more of an issue above ground than below ground, but in the main consensus across the country (with regional differences) has kept the peace for longer than I have been climbing.
But I think there are lessons to be learned (perhaps in both directions). The 'Core Principles' about land acquisition (something the BMC rarely does, when you consider the size of the organization) would be an entirely reasonable BCA policy. The BMC RAD (Regional Access Database) is a single point of contact where the access information for the vast majority of UK crags can be easily found, without having to worry about which region it is/which website to use... But it is the _Regional_ access database, and that access information will be compiled by local volunteers, just like in the BCA.
If there is an organization more similar to the BCA in terms of access bodies, or even similar, I would be (genuinely) interested to know what. I am somewhat biased (or blinkered) as I am far more familiar with the BMC than other sporting bodies. It would be mistake to think we can't learn from other bodies (both their successes and their mistakes)...