Biodiversity

Morning,

I just received this link from a member of my Syndicate.



You may agree with the sentiments, I suspect that most will. I didn't know that the inland cormorant population was largely an influx of foreign birds, I thought that it was a result of the collapse of our sea fisheries. This makes the policy of protection absurd.

Stu

'Foreign', 'national' or other appellations of what 'belongs' or what doesn't is a totally artificial, Human concept. Other species spread as they need to and can do and always have done: that's how the Earth came to be populated and has it's present species distribution.
The exceptions of course are where Humans have accidentally (eg rats) or intentionally (eg goats and many other domesticated animals) introduced 'new' species.
Birds are famous wanderers and often move where circumstance and opportunity takes them. The cormorants in question came here under their own steam as did the collared doves before them in the 1950s. Good luck to them, I say: live and let live.
If we must mess up the environment by over simplification (overstocking glorified table fish) and then wonder why it's going 'wrong' and then do something equally stupid, like so called culling, and then probably creating yet more environmental problems in the attempt, it's time we paused for some proper joined up thinking.
Our recent history is littered with idiotic, failed attempts at over-manipulating food production and leisure opportunities; to the detriment of much else that has evolved alongside us for millenia. It's a good thing that a few people, at least, are seeking to redress the balance back in favour of natural systems.
We are part of Nature and yet we treat it like some spoilt brat who has tired of his old toys and demands ever more new ones. It's time to grow up.

I do worry that angling is going to push itself in a corner that we can't get out of. We currently have the comedy sterotype of sitting on a box by the side of a canal in the rain, minding our own business and hurting nobody. If we're not careful we going to end up with a blood thirsty sterotype as we constantly call for any animal that dares to eats fish to be controlled or eradicated via the barrel of a shotgun.

mol said:

I do worry that angling is going to push itself in a corner that we can't get out of. We currently have the comedy sterotype of sitting on a box by the side of a canal in the rain, minding our own business and hurting nobody. If we're not careful we going to end up with a blood thirsty sterotype as we constantly call for any animal that dares to eats fish to be controlled or eradicated via the barrel of a shotgun.

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Mol,the trouble is that we are such an apethetic shower,that we never back our views up,lets be fair,the awful situation of endocryne disruptors and the contraceptive pill(and others)is probably river angling greatest threat,causing major problems,whether you,or anyone else likes it or not pests are controlled,if you where to ask a roach i think they'd be pleading for us to load our shotguns,ive said this on other threads and i'll say it again,if anglers dont stick up for our fish,what other bu**er will,the answer is simple nobody,you can keep sticking up for every runaway species,all that will happen is the virtual extinction of their prey species and goodbye fish.

alan whittington said:

Mol,the trouble is that we are such an apethetic shower,that we never back our views up,lets be fair,the awful situation of endocryne disruptors and the contraceptive pill(and others)is probably river angling greatest threat,causing major problems,whether you,or anyone else likes it or not pests are controlled,if you where to ask a roach i think they'd be pleading for us to load our shotguns,ive said this on other threads and i'll say it again,if anglers dont stick up for our fish,what other bu**er will,the answer is simple nobody,you can keep sticking up for every runaway species,all that will happen is the virtual extinction of their prey species and goodbye fish.

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Utter rubbish, Alan - or are you just trying to wind us up?

alan whittington said:

whether you,or anyone else likes it or not pests are controlled,.

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That sums up my point.

On rivers cormorants are only a pest to anglers and it's anglers calling for a cull to enhance their fishing which is something, I'm sure, the general public don't care the slightest about. TBH I'd like to see something done but calling for a large scale cull is at best pointless and at worst damaging to angling.

mol said:

That sums up my point.

On rivers cormorants are only a pest to anglers and it's anglers calling for a cull to enhance their fishing which is something, I'm sure, the general public don't care the slightest about. TBH I'd like to see something done but calling for a large scale cull is at best pointless and at worst damaging to angling.

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Not a pest to fish then,or the people who have anything to do with them,professional or not,rats are only a pest to humans,foxes arent a pest to me personally,so shouldnt they be controlled,ask a chicken farmer,are squirrels a pest to you?Probably not,but they are to certain people and are dealt with uncerimoniously,as such,the trouble is we musnt be seen to complain about any form of wildlife,its my opinion(not just mine)that roach,rudd and dace stocks have been absolutely decimated by cormorants in the last 15-20years,if swans were being hammered by an encroaching species,the rspb would be baying for blood,not us though eh,its a funny old game as Greavesy used to say.

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waggy said:

Utter rubbish, Alan - or are you just trying to wind us up?

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Please elaborate on whats rubbish Waggy?Anglers not apathetic?The endocryne problem?Whats rubbish is the forlorn hope that mother nature will repair all the wrongs that occur(mainly through human intervention),it may do,after we're dead and gone,im deadly serious,if you think angling does a jot to protect the rivers in the southern half of England,i'd like to know where,i dont know about Anglesey though.

Loddon Fisheries and conservation consultative, Avon roach project, Wild trout trust, Salmon and trout association, Thames Anglers conservancy, just to name a few organisations that are involved in the conservation of rivers in the south. If you want to know about this in more detail i'll be more than happy to link you to some very interesting reading.

Angling does a lot to protect the aquatic environment in the south of England, through various initiatives and organisations. Just think of what "Angling" encompasses, it covers everything from humble work parties (which increase the biodiversity, if only through simply cutting swims, this creates varied habitats) to the river keepers on chalkstreams that maintain and preserve these globally important environments.

Angling is however powerless when major changes in land usage occur, because by it's nature it isn't holistic.

alan whittington said:

Not a pest to fish then,or the people who have anything to do with them,professional or not,rats are only a pest to humans,foxes arent a pest to me personally,so shouldnt they be controlled,ask a chicken farmer,are squirrels a pest to you?Probably not,but they are to certain people and are dealt with uncerimoniously,as such,the trouble is we musnt be seen to complain about any form of wildlife,its my opinion(not just mine)that roach,rudd and dace stocks have been absolutely decimated by cormorants in the last 15-20years,if swans were being hammered by an encroaching species,the rspb would be baying for blood,not us though eh,its a funny old game as Greavesy used to say.

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Please elaborate on whats rubbish Waggy?Anglers not apethetic?The endocryne problem?Whats rubbish is the forlorn hope that mother nature will repair all the wrongs that occur(mainly through human intervention),it may do,after we're dead and gone,im deadly serious,if you think angling does a jot to protect the rivers in the southern half of England,i'd like to know where,i dont know about Anglesey though.

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Well, 'runaway species'? The only runaway species are the fish that have been overstocked and everything else that's seen as a problem follows on from that. Restocking following pollution, etc is a different need.
As a lifelong angler and , at times, fishery worker, I'm of the opinion that most overstocking, which is what adding more fish to existing populations just to 'improve' the angling is in reality, without thought to the possible 'problems that might be created, is irresponsible and pointless. Pointless because there are those within the angling fraternity for whom there are never enough fish even though a body of water is bursting at the seams with fish.
Angling and Nature are better off without people like this: they'd be better off hooking plastic ducks from a bath tub. They could have red ducks and yellow ducks to give them a bit more interest, but not too many colours or they'd get confused.
We're talking about cormorants on this thread, not yet more red herrings.
It would be interesting to investigate whether parts of Europe not affected by over-stocking mania have had a similar rise in cormorant numbers or whether we've just brought it upon ourselves. What we don't need is the Brainless Brothers calling for a knee-jerk cull of anything before the evidence is in and properly evaluated. If it is proven to be the case, one answer might be to cull the fish and set maximum stocking levels by legislation to get back to a more natural situation or to simply state that anyone overstocking does so at their own risk with no blame attached to other species that might subsequently and inadvertently benefit.
We don't live in Victorian England anymore. We can do it better.

Waggy

Are you seriously suggesting that our rivers are overstocked? Apart from fish, as long as you are cool with the inevitable decline of indigenous predators who can't just fly elsewhere, and that includes birds who won't make it over the channel, kingfishers, herons as well as of course the dear old otter, live and let live. I assume that your fishing hasn't been decimated (yet) or maybe you just don’t fish rivers.

I am afraid that any natural balance is completely skewed already by the massive over population of Homo Sapiens and as such there is no such thing in Western Europe. Man sets the balance where he wants it, either by habitat adaption (destruction) or by protecting or culling; we've been doing it for thousands of years.

Why have a species of bird that for millennia have stayed in Freesia and the Netherlands suddenly migrated to Blighty? I suspect that the hand of man is in there somewhere anyway. But hey ho what's a few fish, or hundreds of yards of river with no fish at all. Live and let live, most people couldn't give a t*ss about fish that they can't see.

I suspect that when the new otter population starts to starve (they are already raiding waste bins in some areas) the otter protection lobby won't be saying live and let live, they will move the balance to help the otter and they'll get massive public support. Perhaps they are our only hope. We certainly aren't.

Stu

The only thing that puzzles me with these "eastern European" cormorants is that most bird watchers can't tell the difference, indeed at some times of the year bona fide ornithologists can't tell the difference. Anglers, often using pellets made of minced up sea fish by the bucket load apparently can. I did find an interesting website about some university doing a study on cormorants at a home counties reservoir but can't find the thread. Its in here somewhere but there are that many threads about the bloody things (and so few answers) that I gave up looking for it.

@ Stu: I'm not saying all of our rivers are overstocked but some may be, hence the presence of seemingly too many predators. There is also the point that after decades of otter decline what we are now witnessing are 'normal' populations of them again and I can understand how anglers who have never witnessed these numbers previously might be a bit unsettled.
Rivers don't exist in a vacuum and whether you put extra stock into either them or any other kind of adjacent fishery, you will obviously invite extra predators and extra breeding of predators into the general area. If there is a problem with any particular river the real root cause might be the overstuffed local commercials.
The birds you mention do 'make it over the channel' as regular ringing studies show.
What we've been doing for 1000s of years has hardly been an unqualified Conservation success, has it? And anyway, 1000s of years is just a jot in time in evolutionary terms but quite long enough for Humans to consign a good many other species to extinction or to the brink.

How do you/we know for certain where certain species of birds have stayed for millennia. Show us your evidence.
A stretch of river 'with no fish at all' would not be down to over-predation - think about it.
It's not a new otter popn., it's an assisted and almost 'as numerous again' version of the previous, almost extinct, now revived one.

In my experience, the FW fish popns. of N Wales and N Lincs/Yorks seem to be in rude good health, despite the presence of otters, cormorants, herons, Eastern Europeans, etc.

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jimmy crackedcorn said:

The only thing that puzzles me with these "eastern European" cormorants is that most bird watchers can't tell the difference, indeed at some times of the year bona fide ornithologists can't tell the difference. Anglers, often using pellets made of minced up sea fish by the bucket load apparently can. I did find an interesting website about some university doing a study on cormorants at a home counties reservoir but can't find the thread. Its in here somewhere but there are that many threads about the bloody things (and so few answers) that I gave up looking for it.

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How would an angler using any sort of groundbait know the difference? Perhaps they should tell the experienced birders how to do it.

I don't think you got my point. The original post talked about these foreign cormorants rather than starving marine birds eating their fish. It seemed that because it was mans fault they are ok but now they arent because allegedly they are foreign and it makes it ok to shoot them. What I find interesting is that experts can't tell the difference but anglers can (based on what I don't know)

I don't dispute allegations that some anglers think that they can differentiate, Jimmy, but to be able to do that they need to be able to compare directly, one to the other, if they're that close biometrically.
As a birder and an angler I know that to be sure you have to have the bird in hand and do proper measurements too, to be sure which sub-species it is. There are other closely related species that pose the same visual ID dilemma, eg, willow warblers and chiff-chaffs.
So, whilst it may be possible to sub-speciate the cormorants in question, I doubt whether anyone could do it by observing them take fish groundbait.

Waggy,you may be a hundred years old,but i doubt it,otters have not been widespread on most southern river systems in my lifetime(and im coming on 57)and up to say 15-20 years ago stocks of freshwater fish were plentiful,now tell me how by natural means otters would have got on,in the last 5 years,without considerable help.Lets get the jurassic park idea going and reintroduce more unsuccessful animals,then we can encourage the numpties to supply food for them,im sorry,but releasing and helping otters propogate our waterways verges on the stupidity of the release of mink,from the fur farms,i know their British ancestry,but their apex riverine predators for gods sake

Sorry Alan but I didn't realise that you must have been asleep throughout the 80s.
Otters were driven to near extinction through the 60s and 70s by the use of the 'drins' group of pesticides, run offs of which were building up especially in FW food chains. Eels, that favourite otter food were badly affected and carried high levels. consequently, so did otters and their breeding success dramatically crashed. They were only saved by introductions of otters from clean parts of Britain and only reintroduced after the Drins had been banned and levels of them in FW fish were monitored until they had fallen to safe levels. This happened far faster in some catchments than others and, I think, strongly determined where and when otters were subsequently released.
The first reintroductions were probably done in the 80s by people supported by the Vincent Wildlife Trust.
I didn't know it was a crime to be a top predator; after all, aren't we?

waggy said:

Sorry Alan but I didn't realise that you must have been asleep throughout the 80s.
Otters were driven to near extinction through the 60s and 70s by the use of the 'drins' group of pesticides, run offs of which were building up especially in FW food chains. Eels, that favourite otter food were badly affected and carried high levels. consequently, so did otters and their breeding success dramatically crashed. They were only saved by introductions of otters from clean parts of Britain and only reintroduced after the Drins had been banned and levels of them in FW fish were monitored until they had fallen to safe levels. This happened far faster in some catchments than others and, I think, strongly determined where and when otters were subsequently released.
The first reintroductions were probably done in the 80s by people supported by the Vincent Wildlife Trust.
I didn't know it was a crime to be a top predator; after all, aren't we?

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I really do apologise and stand aside to your fantastic knowledge of southern England,as ive been living here all of my life,the otter hasnt been around too much,the present levels of population must be twenty fold,there is no crime in being an apex predator,but even you must see the damage being done,either that or your a bloody troll,foley roll.

One doesn't need a fantastic knowledge of anywhere to be objective and realistic.
'Twentyfold'? I doubt it, unless of course the fish population is also twentyfold in order to support them. You can't keep making wild subjective assertions without some referenced support if you want to be taken seriously. It's just common sense really and you can't call 'troll' just because someone disagrees with you.
What figures do you have for the historical numbers of otters against the size of the current population?

Waggy,how old are you,im interested as to where you base your ideas,i am in disagreement with your stance on otters(even though ive stated many times im not in favour of culling otters....at this time),the facts are stacked in favour of a massive increase in otter numbers,certainly in the south,in my lifetime on many,many rivers,i learnt what otter spraint looked/smelt like,so even if i didnt see an animal,i'd know if it/they were about...if i cared to look,nowadays i see signs on several different areas of my home counties,slides,on which they enter the river,marking areas(with spraints)and actual sightings in daylight,none of these happened twenty years ago,or earlier.....my feeling of your troll like comments,comes from the fact that if you had any thoughts of the piscatorial side,you would see that some points i and others have made,had a modicum of sense,but no,you are full of facts based on otters and not fish populations,blaming commercial type fisheries for overstocking,helping the otter,you could say the same about chicken farms...the result is foxes get shot,our opinions differ,our love of wildlife and the countryside doesnt,i shall read your reply,though this is my last post on this thread.

Then we must agree and differ, Alan. I have no propensity for any type of wildlife: they are all equally important. So, although I've been a lifelong fisherman, if fish numbers have to come down a bit to support a viable otter population, then so be it. I don't live down South but I don't see any otter ravaged fisheries in the N Lincs/Yorks area or the N Wales area and yet we have thriving otter popns. I honestly think that anglers nowadays have unrealistic expectations about the numbers of fish a water can hold.
With regard to your comments on more otter sightings than in the decades prior to the 80s, I think it's a good thing. The reason I say this is that because they were hunted previously they were understandably extremely wary to the point where they were virtually nocturnal. Not being persecuted means that they don't have to be and we can therefore enjoy the sight of them behaving normally at last.
The places, by the way, that I see reasonable cormorant numbers also support good heads of fish too. In the places I fish, the only common, mitigating denominator I can think of offhand is that 'invader', Canadian pond weed; good cover for fish, very productive of invertebrates but bloody difficult for anglers.
I think our priority at the moment should be to get eel numbers up to scratch again and that would help a few more perceived problems.