MarkTheSpark
Senior Member
Find half an hour and listen to this excellent BBC examination of the disgraceful way we have degraded some of the rarest habitat on the planet. CLICK HERE
Abstraction - Britain's chalkstream shame
- Thread starter MarkTheSpark
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Right.
Temperature (as I write) 46.7 degrees C in the sun outside my window, 26.8C in the shade, 25.4C in this room, here in the sunny South East.
Schedule for today:
1) Put all garden sprinklers on and run at intervals through the day and throughout the night.
2) Fill up the kiddies' paddling pool.
3) Saunter over to the golf course and complain that "The greens are looking a little brown ... the rest of the course is the Kalahari..."
4) Prescribe two cold baths and long, hourly showers in between.
5) Get really upset about what they're doing to our chalkstreams and write to my MP.
Temperature (as I write) 46.7 degrees C in the sun outside my window, 26.8C in the shade, 25.4C in this room, here in the sunny South East.
Schedule for today:
1) Put all garden sprinklers on and run at intervals through the day and throughout the night.
2) Fill up the kiddies' paddling pool.
3) Saunter over to the golf course and complain that "The greens are looking a little brown ... the rest of the course is the Kalahari..."
4) Prescribe two cold baths and long, hourly showers in between.
5) Get really upset about what they're doing to our chalkstreams and write to my MP.
MarkTheSpark
Senior Member
I take your point, Paul. But industrial use of water is even greater and the disgrace is that we do not have universal water metering.
Nor do we have building regs which include rainwater harvesting systems, to flush the loo and wash clothes. We waste water because, as one of the commentators on the programme says, we do not value it.
But the real problem is that the privatised water industry has not invested in reservoirs and treatment works, and has just plundered the aquifer, without any challenge from the EA.
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For those worrying and fretting about rivers, disappearing personal bests and "P"(red) word, I recommend a big series on BBC Radio 4 at present, Shared Planet. Here is its page -
BBC Radio 4 - Shared Planet
Here is where you can download the prgrammes -
BBC - Podcasts and Downloads - Best of Natural History Radio
Features a number of people, experts in their respective fields, who are not a bunch of "kNobhe*ads" as one of our esteemed members here called, I seem to remember, the Springwatch crowd a few weeks ago, but some very clued-up sorts talking about the problems environmentally and species conservation-wise, and where WE and this planet are going to end up if we don't start addressing them PDQ - if not dead as the Dodo, Dinos and a lot of other stuff soon (including our beloved fish), certainly living lives hardly worth living if you value the wild places and wild things.
Not all doom and gloom, these programmes (many more to follow, it's a series of thirty I understand). Worth a listen.
BBC Radio 4 - Shared Planet
Here is where you can download the prgrammes -
BBC - Podcasts and Downloads - Best of Natural History Radio
Features a number of people, experts in their respective fields, who are not a bunch of "kNobhe*ads" as one of our esteemed members here called, I seem to remember, the Springwatch crowd a few weeks ago, but some very clued-up sorts talking about the problems environmentally and species conservation-wise, and where WE and this planet are going to end up if we don't start addressing them PDQ - if not dead as the Dodo, Dinos and a lot of other stuff soon (including our beloved fish), certainly living lives hardly worth living if you value the wild places and wild things.
Not all doom and gloom, these programmes (many more to follow, it's a series of thirty I understand). Worth a listen.
chub_on_the_block
Well-known member
Thanks for those links - appear very interesting. I have some experience of those involved in restoring rivers and something that i find is that young or even forty-somethings like me have no real understanding of how a river has changed - say since the war. Never mind since Victorian times etc. Since the war groundwater abstraction has increased almost exponentially on Chilterns chalk streams and others. Reaching the point where about 80% of the rain in an average year is taken. Completely mis-managed. Various old licenced abstractors who never used their quota now do so and these "licences of right" are costly to buy out.
But the point i would make is that as anglers we dont always share our knowledge - not surprising when it it could lead to a circus ascending, but by the time it is released it may be old-hat knowledge largely ignored if not forgotten by the protagonists themselves (if still alive). Environmental change spanning generations is not always very noticeable to the living, like rivers reduced to streams or streams reduced to ditches.
For example, there are tales of huge roach and dace in the Beane in the 1950s/60s - from areas where it is now but a ditch and barely capable of supporting sticklebacks. The Rib was once a highly productive river for roach and chub too, but is now regarded as over-abstracted and with very little available fishing unfortunately. As for the Chess, Mimram and other Herts chalk streams that are trout waters, i have far less knowledge of their angling history and no relevant knowledge of their current state.
There was a National Trust pond i used to fish, until fishing was banned about 20 years ago. I decided to go back there one evening quite recently, for old times sake, as the place has always meant a lot to me and i had not been there for 22 years.
When i arrived i noticed immediately that the water plants had changed and the pond had become more choked with vegetation and had reduced in both size and depth quite alarmingly. I am sure the uniquely pristine little roach and modest pike that once lived there could not have survived and must have perished. There was absolutely no indication of either at all - no topping fish no fry at the waters edge. As for the ponds only other inhabitant from its halycon days, its dark pristine tench which drew me there in the first place in the late 1970s, the jury is out. I saw a swirl and a fin in an instant but was partly blinded by a low sun. Incredibly i could not be sure what it was, but at least there was a fish over 2 or 3 pounds present. I hope it was a tench and not a carp. They used to run to about 6Ib here, but a 4Ib fish was exceptional (my PB here just 4Ib 5oz but i had lost better fish). To extract even a pristine 3Ib fish was a massive achievement as it was jungle fishing - placing a float in small clearing between densely weed areas.
I miss the pond how it once was. It would now be a costly venture to return it to a similar condition. The National Trust would need to invest in lots of tree works to remove the willows that have invaded one bank and are now helping to suck the place dry. Sensitive weed management is needed to try to restore plants that have been lost (some of which probably contributed to its SSSI status) and to get rid of dense blanket weed. This was never an issue then, perhaps the pond is more enriched now than it was then, but difficult to see how. Thinking about it, the best approach might be to allow a few anglers to fish there again: clearing particular swims and areas of bank - but not everywhere, providing little patches of disturbance that are good and preventing problem plants like blanket weed (Cladophora) or water fern (Azolla) from taking the pond over. The pond might still support roach then - and Kingfishers or grebes that eat them. But this couldnt happen because anglers only cause problems dont they? - like introducing carp or leaving litter, making campfires or scaring walkers or joggers. So now the pond is neglected. It probably gets a cursory glance from the larger numbers of people that now pass by it, but the people that care about it - anglers or field naturalists really - are gone. The well worn path that once led down to the pond edge disappeared soon after angling was banned. This is the new world, unfortunately.
But the point i would make is that as anglers we dont always share our knowledge - not surprising when it it could lead to a circus ascending, but by the time it is released it may be old-hat knowledge largely ignored if not forgotten by the protagonists themselves (if still alive). Environmental change spanning generations is not always very noticeable to the living, like rivers reduced to streams or streams reduced to ditches.
For example, there are tales of huge roach and dace in the Beane in the 1950s/60s - from areas where it is now but a ditch and barely capable of supporting sticklebacks. The Rib was once a highly productive river for roach and chub too, but is now regarded as over-abstracted and with very little available fishing unfortunately. As for the Chess, Mimram and other Herts chalk streams that are trout waters, i have far less knowledge of their angling history and no relevant knowledge of their current state.
There was a National Trust pond i used to fish, until fishing was banned about 20 years ago. I decided to go back there one evening quite recently, for old times sake, as the place has always meant a lot to me and i had not been there for 22 years.
When i arrived i noticed immediately that the water plants had changed and the pond had become more choked with vegetation and had reduced in both size and depth quite alarmingly. I am sure the uniquely pristine little roach and modest pike that once lived there could not have survived and must have perished. There was absolutely no indication of either at all - no topping fish no fry at the waters edge. As for the ponds only other inhabitant from its halycon days, its dark pristine tench which drew me there in the first place in the late 1970s, the jury is out. I saw a swirl and a fin in an instant but was partly blinded by a low sun. Incredibly i could not be sure what it was, but at least there was a fish over 2 or 3 pounds present. I hope it was a tench and not a carp. They used to run to about 6Ib here, but a 4Ib fish was exceptional (my PB here just 4Ib 5oz but i had lost better fish). To extract even a pristine 3Ib fish was a massive achievement as it was jungle fishing - placing a float in small clearing between densely weed areas.
I miss the pond how it once was. It would now be a costly venture to return it to a similar condition. The National Trust would need to invest in lots of tree works to remove the willows that have invaded one bank and are now helping to suck the place dry. Sensitive weed management is needed to try to restore plants that have been lost (some of which probably contributed to its SSSI status) and to get rid of dense blanket weed. This was never an issue then, perhaps the pond is more enriched now than it was then, but difficult to see how. Thinking about it, the best approach might be to allow a few anglers to fish there again: clearing particular swims and areas of bank - but not everywhere, providing little patches of disturbance that are good and preventing problem plants like blanket weed (Cladophora) or water fern (Azolla) from taking the pond over. The pond might still support roach then - and Kingfishers or grebes that eat them. But this couldnt happen because anglers only cause problems dont they? - like introducing carp or leaving litter, making campfires or scaring walkers or joggers. So now the pond is neglected. It probably gets a cursory glance from the larger numbers of people that now pass by it, but the people that care about it - anglers or field naturalists really - are gone. The well worn path that once led down to the pond edge disappeared soon after angling was banned. This is the new world, unfortunately.
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