A Landmark Case . . . . or what?

Is this the landmark legal decision that many fishery owners have been wishing for or a retrograde step in what, to my mind, has been an ill-conceived ecological experiment?

Can fisheries shoot otters legally? - Angler's Mail

Either way it will be a seriously contentious issue for some time to come.

This extract says a lot:

“The judge, Mr Justice Ousley overturned their decision and criticised Natural England making it clear that public opinion should not be taken into consideration in the application of the law, and added that it had been made according to an undisclosed policy which went beyond NE and DEFRA’s powers in law."

and:



“The ramifications of this decision for fisheries are great in that the law applies to fishery protection in exactly the same way as it does to protect gamekeepers. If financial loss is suffered and there are no other alternatives, fisheries have the full weight of the law on their side to protect their stock from financial loss,”

So, are the gloves coming off or will there be objections and appeals?

The ruling if it is not cancelled out in an appeal is for me the application of common sense to a problem that was caused by common sense not being applied.

The Otter Trust were already saying that Otter numbers were increasing naturally before any reintroductions so it stands to reason that they were not needed.

Once again the self appointed saviours of whatever is popular today have messed things up and if the result of that is that Otters are controlled by shooting or other means then so be it, I welcome the ruling.

It would be very interesting to hear what the Angling Trusts view will be on this.

A long, long way to run this case (buzzards) it will in my view be overturned in the Appeal Court and most likely run right up to the Supreme Court. NE the RSPB, and other wildlife conservation groups have too much riding on this for it not too.
As for PAG the usual hubris BS and bloodlust for them!

I think this thread's going to be a long one!

Probably more otters will be killed on our roads than by fishery owners.
It's a shame they were not quicker off the mark with cormorants.

---------- Post added at 15:29 ---------- Previous post was at 15:18 ----------

Hang on des this include rivers ?

bennygesserit said:

Probably more otters will be killed on our roads than by fishery owners.
It's a shame they were not quicker off the mark with cormorants.

---------- Post added at 15:29 ---------- Previous post was at 15:18 ----------

Hang on des this include rivers ?

Click to expand...

You took the words out of my mouth. The cormorant devastation's still happening all over the country, but feathered creatures (unless you're wearing tweed) are off the agenda. Anyone come across Cormorantbusters? Only just found this page so I haven't verified any of the claims yet - looks like an interesting read.

Cormorant damage fish on Rivers Lakes and canals in the Uk and Ireland

The petition referred to can be found here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/cormorants-biodiversity-in-danger.html

Personally .


Bad move , Although i can see (sort of ) why some fisheries would want to claim otters are causing them big financial damage to satisfiy me they would have to produce exceedingly good proof on paper of the fact thou not just we dont like so we will remove.

What people MUST remember is that the Otter is a native species to the country Carp are NOT yet carp are given almost royal status for an invader IF the otter is cullable then it follows that the Carp is also cullable in numbers large enough to have a decent effect on their overall numbers whats good for one is good for the other no inbetween house ..


PG ...

Winning a case to legally cull cormorants would be a big ask. The RSPB are an extremely wealthy organisation with a lot of wealthy backers and, in this instance, would likely be backed by publicity seeking political organisations such as PETA.

I believe the RSPB would do their best to tie up in knots any legal attempt to settle that issue. It's also very likely why those would control predatory birds do so very carefully and secretively.

Very powerful and very driven some of these self appointed "guardians".

Any farmers can and do protect their stock against predators.
If it's Cormorants, Otters or any predatory animal or human fishery owners should be allowed to do what's needed to safeguard their livelihood.

bennygesserit said:

[/COLOR]Hang on des this include rivers ?

Click to expand...

Probably not as it falls under a different section of the law. Fish in a river are classed as wild creatures and owned by no one. In stillwaters the fish are classed as owned by the water owner and the property of that owner.
PS I think, but would have check, the same applies to pheasant and any other game birds put down for shooting in the countryside they become wild creatures. If correct, then I suspect this will form part of any appeal made against the court ruling made on buzzards.

Ryner stock are owned wild creatures are not!

What if a landowner suffers financial loss through a club not renewing a lease because of a fall in catches due to otters and this can be proved by bodies on the bank?

on a river I doubt they could do very little as they don't own the fish they are wild creatures, which have the freedom to move at will and do often!

Can we get the otter ruling to include towpath cyclists, dogs and dog owners, canoeists, all cormorants and mink!

Peter you missed the dog sh!t off your list mate

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Environmental management – form
Licence to protect fisheries from fish-eating birds
From:Natural England and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs First published:14 April 2015Last updated:16 July 2015, see all updates Part of:Bird licences, Wildlife and habitat conservation and Environmental management Applies to:England
Licence to kill or take fish-eating birds causing significant damage to a fishery.
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Application for a licence to kill or take cormorants causing serious damage to fisheries (A06)
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You may get a licence to kill or take wild birds if there’s no other satisfactory way to prevent serious damage to fisheries or inland waters.

This licence applies to:

cormorants (use form A06)
goosanders
mergansers
herons
otters
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Replaced cormorant application form (A06) with revised version.
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thecrow said:

What if a landowner suffers financial loss through a club not renewing a lease because of a fall in catches due to otters and this can be proved by bodies on the bank?

Click to expand...

Could be EE's illegally fishing and eating ther catch leaving the remains behind to attempt a pass the blame game ... You simply never know these days now if you had Video mmaybe a hope .......:wh .

PG ...

I knew one of the clubs I'm in had a license to cull cormorants so I had a look for it.
If you read down the list it actually mentions otters.

clicked that link hour and a half ago, just got back. very interesting site and worth a read

maggot_dangler said:

Could be EE's illegally fishing and eating ther catch leaving the remains behind to attempt a pass the blame game ... You simply never know these days now if you had Video mmaybe a hope .......:wh .

PG ...

Click to expand...

If it was they wouldn't waste the amount of fish flesh that Otters do.

Seth why are you surprised that otters are on the list? They've been there since the Wildlife and Countryside Act was enacted in 1981. PAG also know this, or certain members of it do, I had a conversation with two of them over 10 years ago about it. So why are they not telling their supports to make application for them? Could it be their tactics are more based on scaremongering with BS, and they know the problem and evidence isn't strong enough in most cases to reach the required EN threshold to grant them?

As to the Ribble, the cormorant licence has gone on a catchment wide licence as of this year. The problem is there’s only one club on the river doing the job. But that’s nothing new given some of the clubs on the river who talk a good story but take no action and do nothing. Those clubs that do nowt have been told if they don’t use their allotments they will be reallocated to them that do.

The bad one said:

Seth why are you surprised that otters are on the list? They've been there since the Wildlife and Countryside Act was enacted in 1981. PAG also know this, or certain members of it do, I had a conversation with two of them over 10 years ago about it. So why are they not telling their supports to make application for them? Could it be their tactics are more based on scaremongering with BS, and they know the problem and evidence isn't strong enough in most cases to reach the required EN threshold to grant them?

As to the Ribble, the cormorant licence has gone on a catchment wide licence as of this year. The problem is there’s only one club on the river doing the job. But that’s nothing new given some of the clubs on the river who talk a good story but take no action and do nothing. Those clubs that do nowt have been told if they don’t use their allotments they will be reallocated to them that do.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I never got to involved with this as I don't have a shotgun anymore.
I was surprised the otters were mentioned that's all.