Police in North Wales have warned drivers of illegal off-road vehicles that they now face having their cars and bikes seized “on the spot” under new powers introduced earlier this year, with officers vowing to use the powers to tackle a sharp rise in damage to protected habitats and anti-social behaviour on the region’s mountains and beaches.
PC Eryl Lloyd, of North Wales Police’s rural crime team who is seconded to Natural Resources Wales, said the message to those driving illegally across protected land was straightforward: “It’s a long walk home.” Under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, officers can now seize vehicles without the prior warnings that previously slowed the enforcement process.
“Previously, we had to give a warning for incidents of anti-social behaviour, careless driving,” Lloyd said. “Now we can just seize the vehicles there on the spot. We will use these new powers and we will be seizing vehicles on the spot as well.”
A problem amplified by social media
Both North Wales Police and Natural Resources Wales report that off-roading incidents are on the rise, and they believe social media is a significant driver. Videos of off-roaders tearing across sensitive terrain are being shared on TikTok and other platforms, drawing more people to the affected sites.
Lloyd said the problem was nationwide in origin: “They come from all over the UK. We are very close to the northwest of England. But we’ve seen people travelling from the Midlands, even London as well.” Summer months brought particular strain, with Newborough Forest and Newborough Beach on Anglesey experiencing an explosion of visitors — some of whom set illegal fires and left barbecues, adding to the damage on already fragile sites.
The issue reached a legal milestone in August when three men were convicted of causing “irreversible” harm to the Berwyn Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 4x4s. John Robinson and Michael Williams were fined more than £2,000 each and disqualified from driving for two months. Joseph Hodgson was ordered to pay £1,000 compensation and was banned from entering the Berwyn SSSI for three years. The conviction followed the emergence of TikTok videos showing the seven-vehicle convoy driving from Liverpool across the moorland.
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Peatlands under threat
The Berwyn Range incident highlighted the scale of the ecological damage that off-road vehicles can inflict. Kirsty Roberts of Natural Resources Wales explained that the damage included the destruction of around 40 centimetres of peat — a depth that equates to roughly 400 years of natural peat growth.
“To see this area naturally recover, we just wouldn’t see it in our lifetime,” she said. The damage also affects wildlife, particularly ground-nesting birds, and Roberts warned that without intervention to prevent further degradation, “we’re not going to be able to reverse that biodiversity curve.”
E-bikes are increasingly part of the problem. Lloyd said his team was “getting a lot more reports about e-bikes, which also cause the same amount of damage as motorbikes.”
The landowners’ perspective
Lord Newborough, who owns the Rhug Estate in Denbighshire where the Berwyn land damaged last month is located, described himself as “gutted” by the destruction. He said the estate had opened up areas for public enjoyment but stressed that the mountain was “very precious” and that he and his family had tried to be “good custodians for many years.”
“I feel gutted basically because this is damage that has happened in recent years,” he said. “I’m pretty old myself, so I grew up respecting the mountains and not seeing the encroachment that we’ve got by the public now. So, yes it hurts me and it hurts, the fact that the damage has been done.”
Under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, a fifth of Wales is designated as access land, where owners have agreed that the public have a right of entry on foot — but that access does not extend to driving vehicles across the land, and Lord Newborough’s monitoring of birdlife on the mountain has confirmed that “certain precious nests are being damaged wilfully.”
Why it matters
The new seizure powers represent a significant shift in how police and conservation bodies can respond to illegal off-roading. The previous requirement to issue warnings meant that enforcement was often reactive and slow, allowing repeat offences and making it difficult to deter those who treated the restrictions as optional. The ability to act immediately — to take a vehicle away from a driver there and then — changes the calculus for anyone considering driving across protected land.
The link to social media is also significant. The TikTok videos that led to the August convictions were, in a grim irony, the offenders’ own footage — and they became the evidence that secured the prosecution. Police suspect that such sharing is not merely a byproduct of off-roading but a driver of it, drawing more people to sites they would not otherwise have known about. That presents a novel enforcement challenge: content moderation on platforms outside police control may have a direct bearing on habitat protection on the ground.
What happens next
North Wales Police and Natural Resources Wales have signalled that enforcement will be stepped up as the new powers are used in practice. The summer peak has passed, but the concern is that the habit — and the online following it generates — will not. Landowners like Lord Newborough are calling for more resources to protect sensitive sites, and the government’s 2026 legislation gives officers a tool they did not previously have. The question now is whether the deterrence effect of on-the-spot seizure is enough to reverse the trend, or whether more fundamental measures are needed to address the social media dynamics that are fuelling it.
Source: BBC News (BBC Wales)
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