Save our Rivers

There is a letter in Mays edition Trout and Salmon. Where a 'National Farmers' Union official has been quoted and states that they want to see rivers like the Swale, Ure and the Wharfe and every stream to be dredged from the Humber to the source of these great rivers and though out of the UK .

Destroying all the spawning reeds and the hard work done by clubs and members to maintain the rivers, environmental vandalism.

All because of the rain and floods of 2012 and the flooding.

Be laughable if these loons didn't have such a powerful "Affordable Food for Hard-working Brits" lobby.

Whingeing again, are they? There are times when I'm sure our farmers are French!!

And if they get their wish just watch the water table drop and the droughts return when it isn't pissing down. Idiots.

To hot, to dry, to wet, to cold, working to many hours, always moaning about something, nobody forced them to be farmers, if farming is so bad why do lots of sons follow their fathers into it?

Be interesting to see what response the National Parks and the Angling Trust have when all the rivers are turn our rivers into featureless uniformed waterways.

dalesman said:

Be interesting to see what response the National Parks and the Angling Trust have when all the rivers are turn our rivers into featureless uniformed waterways.

Click to expand...

I heard rumours of this a while ago: http://www.fishingmagic.com/forums/...nts/335164-de-regulation-dredging-rivers.html

If you truly care, my advice is do something for yourself; contact your local MP, don't sit back and wait for somebody else to do it all for you.
As and this is not an anti Angling Trust dig, I don't think they're even being consulted...?

cg74 said:

If you truly care, my advice is do something for yourself; contact your local MP

Click to expand...

Already done, his local part time secretary works with me.

dalesman said:

Already done, his local part time secretary works with me.

Click to expand...

I just hope many others follow suit. It's not even an effective method of flood management, just moves a problem (making it bigger) and destroys an ecosystem in the process.

Maybe an ATr member might ask the Trust to put together a statement that anglers can copy and paste to express their concerns to the EA and their local MPs.

cg74 said:

Maybe an ATr member might ask the Trust to put together a statement that anglers can copy and paste to express their concerns to the EA and their local MPs.

Click to expand...

If any of you guys want to formulate a statement encompassing your concerns, I'm up to introducing it to the ATr, there's a Midland Forum coming up early in June which I plan to attend. I may be showing a degree of ignorance here but I thought that when a river flooded or the flow was greatly increased by a high volume of rainfall, this would wash away large quantities of silt?

P.S. Do the ATr acknowledge when you confirm attendance for these forums.

If my memory serve me right Country File broadcast something a while ago, where they visited a farm that had been hit hard by the floods and programme showed the feeder streams and a river running through his land.

Showing feeder stream blocked by fallen trees and partly silted up similar problems on the main river causing damming to the river. The farmer in question then went on to say the EA used to regular have work teams clearing problems with fallen trees etc, but not been on his land working for a good few years.

And before any body mentions it, we did have exceptional rain last.

I attended our AGM recently and this subject was raised.

It seems that this all stems from a group of farmers on the Somerset Levels who had asked for consents to dredge some of their 'drains'.

We were told that at a meeting (where the Angling Trust were present) the 'government' said they would consider allowing up to 20% of a drain/river to be dredged each year IF the farmers could form a co-operative and all agree to fund the operations.

So in theory after five years the whole drain/river system could be dredged completely.

Because most of our river systems are protected in one way of another (SSSI/SPA/etc) it would be Natural England who would need to agree for these dredging operations to go ahead.
However in most cases the riparian owners of our rivers already have existing consents to remove excess material that had been laid down during flooding.

I just wish that the Angling Trust would publish the information they have in the National newspapers for everyone to see immediately it becomes available.

Interesting link.....Dredging Today – River Gipping Dredging Plan Moves Forward (UK)

There is a huge difference between maintenance of drains and rivers. Drains have no natural mechanism to flush out and will silt up in anything from 5 to 30 years depending on depth, silt influx etc. hence the acceptance that they can be dredged regularly. I have had involvement in dredging a drain with consent from Natural England and the 20% rule applies so that there is always some natural, reeded bank each year. If you don't dredge a drain it will, within a few decades, turn to marsh.

Some dredging will always be needed on rivers as otherwise flooding can occur where it can do a lot of damage but not the wholesale dredging as done from the 40s to the 70s. On the Dorset Stour they finally learnt their lesson in 1979 when 2 catastrophic floods within 6 months flooded several towns. They realised that the more you channel the water and straighten the river the greater the chance of all the water arriving at one place at the same time. Before then they had a full time dredger who had to do something to stay in work; now they are far more sympathetic.

What makes the outright river dredging/straightening unlikely to happen again are EU directives on habitat especially endangered fish and mammals like salmon, voles and otters. What happened on the Stour was that flood defences were built over the following decade once they understood how the river flooded and in the bad floods since there has been far less impact on homes as a result. The same will have to happen in Yorkshire.

jack sprat said:

What makes the outright river dredging/straightening unlikely to happen again are EU directives on habitat especially endangered fish and mammals like salmon, voles and otters.

Click to expand...

"Blahdy EU! Namby pamby, straight banana, elf'n'safety, energy saving bunch of tell Us what to do foreigners ... repatriate the right to ruin Britain to the British, we say!" [etc - add to taste]