Animal Rights Activity is Harming Rural Life

There will be a lot of this sort of skullduggery now that they can concentrate on angling thanks to our beloved MP's banning hunting but what can we do?

I firmly believe, and always have done, that the place to start educating people about the benefits of angling is in the schools. These children are the future men/parents/fishermen pro or anti fishing citizens of this country and unfortunately very little or nothing of angling or field sports is ever discussed in schools.

Certainly there many anti blood sport supporters amongst the teaching fraternity and they bring a lot of furtive pressure on their classes by giving a distorted view of angling and field sports. Just how this can be counteracted I don't really know but I'm sure that this is where people giving a balanced explanation of our sport is most needed.

Who would do it? I don't know that either but one thing for sure is that if we don't get our act together pretty soon we are going to come under severe pressure in the very near future.

I think each police force has a wildlife officer, they do in my neck of the woods anyway.
Could they possibly get involved with school children? And it would cover many subjects within the countryside.

Sweeping generalisation from me but, the playstation generation (mainly) aren't arsed about the countryside Graham.

Remember for people of a certain age the countryside, birds nests, angling and its mystery, general wildlife etc etc was an escape, youngsters have everything on tap now mate! Its all there, virtual fishing the lot!

loads of kids nowadays if asked where meat comes from havn,t a clue.

Can you beleive it, there was a letter recently in a fly fishing magazine which asked that they did not publish photographs of trout with hooks in their mouths!!

Angling is one of the largest participation sports in the country yet there is next to no coverage on terrestrial TV or radio stations. This says much about the townie/luvvie crowd that end up running these organisations but without widespread access to fishing related information it is unlikely future generations will grow up with anything approaching an unbiased opinion. If those running the Beeb et al could get away with it I'm pretty sure they would like to put out programmes sympathetic to the causes of these activists. Instead all they can do is ensure there are next to no field sports on TV/Radio other than in relation to antis.

"I firmly believe, and always have done, that the place to start educating people about the benefits of angling is in the schools. These children are the future men/parents/fishermen pro or anti fishing citizens of this country and unfortunately very little or nothing of angling or field sports is ever discussed in schools."

One of the teacher's at my grandson's high school is a keen and experienced angler and has just formed an angling club with the full backing of the headmaster and governors but then this is a fairly rural seaside community.
So far more than 20 pupils have joined including my grandson and a couple of girls.
It is a shame that more schools don't encourage country pursuits.

They need teachers to do it Frank, just filling in the forms in order for a trip to go ahead is an admin (not to mention legal) nightmare!
The cost of hiring a bus/driver is also very expensive now as usually mini buses are too small for the numbers
Their are many schools that do angling related projects with kids, many have done for a long time, they just don't publicise it.

It has to be thought out very carefully as well. My kids went on a school trip to see Charlton vs Birmingham a few weeks ago. They're mentally scarred and I think have been put off football for life.

Baz - you are correct all police forces have Wildlife Liason Officers. Sadly many of them are anti's themselves in my experience and their misguided views are best kept well away from the youth.