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Post by silverinvicta on Mar 1, 2006 8:10:34 GMT -1
Iv'e fished reguarly on Manx rivers for 15 years and never been asked for a licence, different on the res's though. But we have a terrible poaching problem everywhere.
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Post by wnion on Jul 7, 2006 11:08:57 GMT -1
Angling hit by DEFRA cuts Written By: Simon Hart On Date: 7/7/2006
Defra’s quiet announcement that their grant to the Environment Agency for fisheries management will be cut from £6.3 million to £5.9 million in 2006/7 raises questions about how angling rates in the Government’s list of priorities. £250,000 will be lost from the EA’s Salmonid Improvement Project and £150,000 cut from fish movement enforcement at a time when fish smuggling and disease are a growing issue.
Anglers themselves funded the EA to the tune of over £18.5 million in 2004/5 through the purchase of rod licences. The Government’s reward for such a massive contribution? A 5.9% cut in the fisheries grant.
This would be merely annoying if Defra was an efficient department eking out its budget in the best interests of the countryside, but as we know that is far from reality. This is after all the department which is overseeing the disastrous introduction of Single Farm Payments. There has to be a suspicion that fishermen are paying the price for the failings of the Rural Payments Agency.
There is also a lesson here for anglers, and angling organisations, as a whole. Of course we must all have a relationship with the Government, but if that precludes active criticism then it has become too close.
When hard decisions have to be made the first cut will come where there is least resistance, and the last where there is most. The EA is not alone in having its Defra funding cut but would the fisheries management budget have been hit quite so hard had 1.2 million rod licence holders been more united, vocal and resolute?
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