MarkTheSpark
Senior Member
I have today written to Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive of the Angling Trust, imploring him to focus the ATr's efforts on getting the water companies and Environment Agency to do what they are paid for: respectively, managing water supply and protecting the river environment.
Both have failed miserably. Four years ago, an EA report said "...freshwater resources are most heavily exploited in South East and Eastern England and can be considered to be under stress by international standards. When we take population density into account, we actually have less water per person in South East England than many hotter, drier countries such as Morocco and Egypt."
Yet precisely nothing has happened since that report to address this problem with water metering or improved supply. The situation we face now was predictable and predicted, but the Government has failed to rein in demand.
As I have said in my letter, the ATr has here an opportunity to demonstrate that angling cares for the environment, and to forge new links to conservation groups which have far more clout than angling. And as I have also said, it's time to forget all other campaigns; this is a crossroads for river angling, and if we fail to bring our concerns to the public attention, we will have failed the next generation of anglers.
Please write a similar letter to the ATr to bring our concerns to Mark Lloyd's attention; if you do nothing else for your sport this year, do this.
I was on the Nene last week. It is a sorry, stagnant, barely-flowing puddle. Elsewhere, the situation is even worse. This summer, the situation will be utterly disastrous for fish and fishing. I've had enough. I hope you have, too.
---------- Post added at 10:54 ---------- Previous post was at 10:52 ----------
This is the content of my letter. Feel feel to take anything from it, if this helps:
I am writing to you because I am becoming increasingly alarmed at the campaigns in which the Angling Trust is becoming involved.
I believe, as do many other anglers, that we have reached a crossroads in river angling's history; that the combined factors of climate change and increasing water demand have the potential to effectively destroy rivers which have flowed for millennia. This is already happening and the current drought in the south-east and East Anglia will irreparably damage the ecology of most of our remaining chalkstreams and even our lowland rivers.
I have only to cycle ten minutes from my home to see a river with almost no flow at all at a time when it should be bank-high and healthy. It is struggling, gasping for life like a stranded fish. Not far from me in Norfolk, the situation on iconic rivers like the Wensum is even worse. For two years, these rivers haven't flooded; reinvigorating, fresh water has not come and their essential gravel runs lie stagnant and silted. It is a disaster, yet still the water companies have failed to stem waste through water metering and leakage. Indeed, many are applying for additional river abstraction consents to top up ailing reservoirs, while the Environment Agency is completely failing in its duty to maintain the river environment. Ten years or more since the advent of the European Water Framework Directive, UK water companies and the Environment Agency have taken no effective measures to mitigate against this foreseeable situation and no sanctions have been meted out to persuade them toward sustainable river management.
Yet the Angling Trust is wasting its limited resource on pointless exercises. There is precisely no prospect of this or any other government allowing any licensed control of otters, yet the AT has been hijacked by commercial fisheries and a vocal press and launched initiatives in this area which set it against a much more powerful lobby. It has even repeated the scurrilous and unfounded rumour that otters are still being released from captivity.
MORE
---------- Post added at 10:55 ---------- Previous post was at 10:54 ----------
In its own literature, the AT admits that cormorant predation is a problem only because of over-abstraction yet, instead of choosing to fight alongside wildlife groups against the real culprit, has chosen to go against them, and lobby to kill cormorants. This is a foolhardy waste of my money.
I am aware that the AT has voiced support for the Blueprint for Water and other well-researched and science-based campaigning. It is time the AT steered itself towards those goals, and refused to get involved in battles it cannot win. If members and the media are not engaged by the truly important threats to their sport, it is the AT's duty to educate and inform them, not to pander to populist nonsense because it is the line of least resistance.
I feel I must again repeat that I believe, as do many others, that the looming disaster facing our rivers is our final chance to make a difference; by summer, the damage will be obvious even to laymen and the AT should be preparing to turn this disaster into positive action; a campaign which reaches beyond its own membership, and beyond angling itself.
We have here an opportunity to prove that angling is umbilically connected to the river ecology and cares about wildlife; an opportunity to build bridges with the Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and a great many other powerful organisations and achieve change; at the very least, ensure that the general public understands that the hosepipe ban is a symptom of a much more serious and sinister infrastructure failure; the story of water companies failing to supply water, and an Environment Agency failing to protect the environment.
Both have failed miserably. Four years ago, an EA report said "...freshwater resources are most heavily exploited in South East and Eastern England and can be considered to be under stress by international standards. When we take population density into account, we actually have less water per person in South East England than many hotter, drier countries such as Morocco and Egypt."
Yet precisely nothing has happened since that report to address this problem with water metering or improved supply. The situation we face now was predictable and predicted, but the Government has failed to rein in demand.
As I have said in my letter, the ATr has here an opportunity to demonstrate that angling cares for the environment, and to forge new links to conservation groups which have far more clout than angling. And as I have also said, it's time to forget all other campaigns; this is a crossroads for river angling, and if we fail to bring our concerns to the public attention, we will have failed the next generation of anglers.
Please write a similar letter to the ATr to bring our concerns to Mark Lloyd's attention; if you do nothing else for your sport this year, do this.
I was on the Nene last week. It is a sorry, stagnant, barely-flowing puddle. Elsewhere, the situation is even worse. This summer, the situation will be utterly disastrous for fish and fishing. I've had enough. I hope you have, too.
---------- Post added at 10:54 ---------- Previous post was at 10:52 ----------
This is the content of my letter. Feel feel to take anything from it, if this helps:
I am writing to you because I am becoming increasingly alarmed at the campaigns in which the Angling Trust is becoming involved.
I believe, as do many other anglers, that we have reached a crossroads in river angling's history; that the combined factors of climate change and increasing water demand have the potential to effectively destroy rivers which have flowed for millennia. This is already happening and the current drought in the south-east and East Anglia will irreparably damage the ecology of most of our remaining chalkstreams and even our lowland rivers.
I have only to cycle ten minutes from my home to see a river with almost no flow at all at a time when it should be bank-high and healthy. It is struggling, gasping for life like a stranded fish. Not far from me in Norfolk, the situation on iconic rivers like the Wensum is even worse. For two years, these rivers haven't flooded; reinvigorating, fresh water has not come and their essential gravel runs lie stagnant and silted. It is a disaster, yet still the water companies have failed to stem waste through water metering and leakage. Indeed, many are applying for additional river abstraction consents to top up ailing reservoirs, while the Environment Agency is completely failing in its duty to maintain the river environment. Ten years or more since the advent of the European Water Framework Directive, UK water companies and the Environment Agency have taken no effective measures to mitigate against this foreseeable situation and no sanctions have been meted out to persuade them toward sustainable river management.
Yet the Angling Trust is wasting its limited resource on pointless exercises. There is precisely no prospect of this or any other government allowing any licensed control of otters, yet the AT has been hijacked by commercial fisheries and a vocal press and launched initiatives in this area which set it against a much more powerful lobby. It has even repeated the scurrilous and unfounded rumour that otters are still being released from captivity.
MORE
---------- Post added at 10:55 ---------- Previous post was at 10:54 ----------
In its own literature, the AT admits that cormorant predation is a problem only because of over-abstraction yet, instead of choosing to fight alongside wildlife groups against the real culprit, has chosen to go against them, and lobby to kill cormorants. This is a foolhardy waste of my money.
I am aware that the AT has voiced support for the Blueprint for Water and other well-researched and science-based campaigning. It is time the AT steered itself towards those goals, and refused to get involved in battles it cannot win. If members and the media are not engaged by the truly important threats to their sport, it is the AT's duty to educate and inform them, not to pander to populist nonsense because it is the line of least resistance.
I feel I must again repeat that I believe, as do many others, that the looming disaster facing our rivers is our final chance to make a difference; by summer, the damage will be obvious even to laymen and the AT should be preparing to turn this disaster into positive action; a campaign which reaches beyond its own membership, and beyond angling itself.
We have here an opportunity to prove that angling is umbilically connected to the river ecology and cares about wildlife; an opportunity to build bridges with the Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and a great many other powerful organisations and achieve change; at the very least, ensure that the general public understands that the hosepipe ban is a symptom of a much more serious and sinister infrastructure failure; the story of water companies failing to supply water, and an Environment Agency failing to protect the environment.
mg: