While I welcome the introduction of the barbel to the Ouse and Ouzel I do feel it's too little too late, like putting a sticking plaster on a terminally ill patient.
The Ouse should never of been aloud to collapse into the state it is now.
If you look at the pressures put on the Ouse, the massive expansion of Milton Keynes, the infestation of signal crayfish, increased cormorant predation, mink. We then have the collapse of the freshwater eel, down in numbers by 95% and then with EA consent they introduce otters, I'd love to read any impact study carried out before they were introduced. The fact is the Ouse was in big trouble before the otter's turned up, that's why we had a glut of big fish with nothing to back them up. The otters were the final nail in the coffin.
Now it seem to me the EA are running round like headless chickens trying to put things right. They need to sort out predation, look at the amount of water abstracted from the river, look at discharge into the river and all of the contaminates it may contain before introducing more fish as a quick fix.
A healthy river should be a self supporting eco system with room for both predator and prey the Ouse most certainly is not.
Richard
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