Post by Hoppy on Jun 22, 2006 16:41:44 GMT -1
APPEAL TO THE MEMBERS OF THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT
From
THE FEDERATION OF CLWYD ANGLING CLUBS
On behalf of
THE ANGLERS OF WALES – VISITING AND LOCAL
A. Introduction:
On 27th October 2005 Environment Agency Wales published a paper entitled ‘Wales’ environment proves perfect bait for visiting anglers’. The paper quoted figures published by Carwyn , Minister for Countryside, Environment and Planning relating to the first year of the ‘Fishing Wales’ partnership between Environment Agency Wales and Wales Tourist Board which the Assembly has agreed to fund to the amount of £2.4 million over three years.
The first year’s £800,000 investment had resulted in £27.3 million boost to the Welsh economy; that being only part of the total of £69 million that fishing trips to Wales had generated in the financial year 2004 to 2005. (See Appendix A)
A £27.3 million boost for an outlay of only £800,000. Fantastic! Proof, if ever proof were needed, of the importance of angling to Wales.
Yet Environment Agency Wales is being starved of funding, or is being set priorities that take its resources away from protecting the very resource that attracts all these visiting anglers that generate these revenues to the Welsh economy.
Poachers in Wales are now free to roam as they will, with little or no fear of apprehension. You are allowing one of the greatest assets of this great country to be depleted at an ever increasing rate! Now is the time to start to stop the rot and take action to protect one of Wales’s great heritages.
B. What The Assembly and the Environment Agency Wales are telling your constituents!
Note: all references in this document are taken either from the Welsh Assembly Government or the Environment Agency web sites. Copies of which are included in the appendices.
1. Welsh Fisheries (Appendix C)
Fishing has long been important in Wales - we have some of Britain’s richest and most famous salmon and sea trout rivers. In the last few decades, as water quality has improved, high quality fisheries have begun to return, even in the rivers of the industrial south.
2. Managing freshwater fisheries (Appendix D)
Tourism and recreation are extremely important to Wales bringing in an estimated £1.3 billion in 1994
Angling is an important component of this economic benefit to Wales. The 61,000 people in Wales who purchase licences to fish for salmon, sea trout, brown trout, coarse fish and eels. This is only half the people who fish in Wales with the other 50% comprising visitors: Rural economies benefit by well over £100 million from angler expenditure in Wales. With half a million people making fishing at least a part of their holidays here.
3. EAW annual report and accounts 2005 (Appendix E)
The quality of our rivers and bathing waters is a good indicator of a clean environment. It affects our health and can help Wales’ economy by encouraging tourism – which generates over £800 million a year.
4. EAW website 20/3/06 (Appendix F)
A good quality environment is a pre-requisite for a thriving fishery so, when people see a salmon leaping, they know that there's not much wrong with their local river. Of course this doesn't happen by itself and Environment Agency Wales spends millions of pounds each year, part of which comes from the sale of rod licences, on managing and improving fisheries.
5. Managing freshwater fisheries (Appendix D)
Under the Environment Act 1995 the Agency has a general duty to "maintain, improve and develop salmon, trout, freshwater fish and eel fisheries" and to consult its Fisheries, Ecology, Recreation Advisory Committee as to the manner in which the general duties are performed.
6. Environmental Crimewatch initiative (See Appendix B)
A project aimed at addressing environmental crime through a targeted enforcement approach and by working together with other partners who fight environmental crime or who are affected by it.
Partners involved in Environmental Crimewatch include Environment Agency Wales, Welsh Assembly Government, local authorities covering North Wales, Chester and the Wirral, North Wales Police, Countryside Council for Wales, National Farmers Union, large landowners in the area. Other relevant partners are being approached.
The project is managed by Environment Agency Wales
7. Extra fish planned for UK rivers. (Appendix G)
The Environment Agency plans to increase the number of fish in English and Welsh rivers in a bid to improve the natural habitat and boost business.
The agency's strategy builds on an initiative in Wales and aims to increase the number of fish in rivers by 2011.
The report also details the "significant" social benefits of angling.
One scheme in Rowheath Park, Birmingham launched three years ago introduced children who had been involved in youth crime and truancy to fishing, it said.
About 98% of those on the scheme have not re-offended.
C: What is happening in reality?
The numbers of salmon entering Welsh rivers is declining to such an extent that the Environment Agency Wales is now recommending that anglers apply a catch and release policy because the stocks are so severely depleted. The Agency is also spending large sums to ensure that the quality of the water in Welsh rivers is improved or maintained where the quality is high. Actions are being taken in all manner of ways to ensure the water in Wales and the environment related thereto are monitored and action is taken to minimise the potential effects of pollution and environmental degradation. The Assembly and the Environment Agency are doing a great deal of good works to protect and improve Welsh rivers. However little is being done to protect the fish that live in those rivers!
There is a legal requirement for all anglers to purchase a fishing licence and an obligation imposed upon the Environment Agency Wales to ensure that anglers comply with that legal requirement. As in so many other areas of public life the Agency and its staff are set performance indicators by way of which to show how well or otherwise they are carrying out their duties. To meet these performance targets Agency staff visit well attended angling venues such as large and popular lakes and there they check for anglers fishing without the appropriate licence. A quick and relatively easy way to catch the wrong doers and to achieve compliance with the performance targets! However the damage to the fish stocks and to the Welsh economy is being done in the rivers and their estuaries where poachers are now free to roam at will well aware that there chances of being caught are minimal. The Environment Agency make much of their successes in bringing to the courts offenders apprehended whilst illegally fishing, however scrutiny of those cases show that the offenders have been apprehended either on popular and large venues or on estuarial waters where the perpetrators were foolishly over confident of evading apprehension. Nothing is heard of success in apprehending offenders higher in our river systems, where the real damage is done. Salmon that are returning from Iceland and the Arctic waters to the rivers of their birth are easy prey to poachers. The fish lay in shoals in the river pools, the water for the most part gin clear, waiting for conditions to be favourable for them to swim up river to the small feeder streams where they will mate and lay their eggs. Whilst in the pools they are easy prey to poachers armed with nets, snares or poison to name but a small part of their armoury. The clearing of a singled pool by poachers can earn them perhaps 20 fish with an average weight of say 8lbs that sell for £2.00 a pound: £320.00. Not bad for one nights work and the figures quoted are in every respect conservative! To catch 20 salmon would take many anglers a fishing lifetime, but such is their fascination and dedication to the sport that they persist.
If you ask the police or the Environment Agency Wales what is the poaching situation in Wales? They will tell you that there is no poaching problem! The police will tell you that they have few, if any, reported incidents. The Environment Agency Wales will say much the same because their emergency free 0800 hotline telephone system just does not function. If you ask the angling population or many members of the rural community about poachers and poaching, they will tell you that it is rife! A simple example is given by a member of a local angling club, who is also a teacher and local rugby coach. The Environment Agency Wales completed the installation of a new fish pass costing £280,000 on the river Clywedog at Bontuchel in North Wales in the summer of 2005. Whilst coaching his rugby players the local club member was told, in all innocence, by one of his young charges, that he and other local lads were having great fun taking salmon from the river above the newly installed fish pass. The Environment Agency was promptly advised of this matter. There has to date (April 2006) been no reported prosecution or other action reported either in the press or to the club member! Why? The front line staff at the Environment Agency Wales is, for the most part, highly dedicated and hard working. However the fisheries Enforcement Officers are now charged not only with protecting our rivers but also our countryside generally from fly tippers and other environmental polluters! They are also rightly protected by current health and safety regulations that restrict the Enforcement Officers from loan working.
To give an indication of the workload imposed upon the Enforcement Officers working for the Agency in North Wales alone, the following statistics may be helpful:
Current figures:
Area of operations: From Borth, below Machynlleth in central Cardigan Bay in the West around to the Dee Estuary in the East and all inland areas down to Wrexham and Ruthin and back across to the coast in the West.
Length of rivers: Approximately 3,470 miles of main and other rivers that fall within the Northern Area. (Figure provided by the EAW)
Number of Enforcement Officers: 8 (one vacancy yet to be filled as at April 2006)
Number of pairs to carry out Enforcement duties: 4
Duties include policing all waters rivers, lakes, estuaries and all coastal waters also environmental pollution over the whole of the above specified land mass.
Historical figures.
Area of operations: as above
Length of rivers: as above
Number of Enforcement Officers: 24
Number of pairs to carry out Enforcement duties: Lone working did not apply so to comply with current health and safety requirement the current comparable number would have to be 48
Duties include policing all waters rivers, lakes, estuaries and all coastal waters.
The staffing levels of Enforcement Officers have been similarly reduced throughout the whole of Wales.
Note: Enforcement Officers are deemed to be those officers empowered with the powers of arrest and apprehension as would apply to a police officer plus the additional powers of what used to known as a River Bailiff. (There has been anecdotal evidence of EAW officers having been misrepresented in an effort to provide misleading information!)
Given the length of poachable rivers in North Wales for example, it is not surprising that there are no reported poaching incidents! Poachers were, in the past, sought out by the then National Rivers Authority Enforcement Officers. Intelligence was gathered by Enforcement Officers by way of their local contacts. They knew the community, the rivers and the some suitable and therefore likely poaching locations!
One of Wales’s most valuable natural resources is being squandered!
“Results from research carried out to measure the effectiveness of the Fishing Wales marketing campaigns show that those requesting a Fishing Wales brochure took a total of 58,687 fishing trips to Wales worth £69 million to the Welsh economy in 2004-2005” Figures provided by the Environment Agency Wales 27 October 2005.
D: The way forward.
Wales is a beautiful land with a mountainous hinterland and relatively narrow coastal strip upon which most of its population rely for homes and work. The rivers of Wales flow from those hills to the sea whence the salmon return from their sojourn in the artic waters to breed. These fish are a precious heritage that we are duty bound to protect for their own sake and for the sake of the people of Wales to whom they bring so much and can bring much more.
Unemployment is a major issue, particularly in North Wales which the European Union has designated a socially deprived area. The migratory fish stocks in our rivers provide an easy and lucrative form of income for those in the area who lack meaning full work, live on befits and turn to crime to supplement their incomes. The additional jobs that could be created in bringing the levels of policing and protection of our rivers back to those previous levels would be real jobs desperately required in areas where jobs are at a premium. Those employed doing these jobs will protect the source of the multi million pound revenue income generated by home as well as visiting anglers.
There is currently a declining stock of Salmon and Sea Trout in Welsh rivers. This loss of stock is due to many factors: Irish drift nets slaughtering the fish on the high seas, depletion of the natural food species; loss due to seal attack and the general depletion by a myriad other natural predators. Having survived all that and returned to their home rivers, the fish then have to run the gauntlet of poachers determined to take the fish by any means and then to sell on the black-market for a pittance of the real value of the fish.
The salmon rivers of Scotland are responsible for billions of pounds in angling revenue to Scotland and the Scottish Parliament is actively encouraging the protection of its rivers and tourism based upon angling. In all the Scottish tourism advertising angling is always predominant. Scotland and its salmon are so well associated that even the supermarkets advertising salmon are keen to associate it with Scotland! Ireland is similarly proud to include angling as a tourist attraction in all its publicity. Why not Wales?
In presenting this appeal to Members of The Assembly Government there is no implied or intended criticism of the Assembly Government of the Environment Agency Wales, simply a wish to draw Members attention to the current situation ‘on the ground’ as anglers in Wales see it, and to ask Members to look at the priorities being set for the Environment Agency Wales. Welsh anglers are appealing to Assembly Members to impose on the Environment Agency Wales performance indicators that require the Agency to actively seek out poacher. By poachers we mean those seeking to take fish from our inland and coastal waters by illegal methods not only those fishing without the appropriate fishing licences for which current performance indicators are already in place. Poaching, by its very nature is unlikely to be spotted by either anglers or the general public. It is usually carried out in isolated areas well away from prying eyes. Poachers can only be apprehended after collecting intelligence from local communities and by spotting tell tale signs along river banks. There are presently 4 pairs of officers responsible for 3,470 miles of river in North Wales. This equates to 867.5 each and takes no account of the hundreds of miles of coastline!! This is to protect on of Wales’s great heritages!!
The people of Wales and those many thousands of anglers who come to fish its waters deserve much better!
APPEAL TO THE MEMBERS OF THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT
From
THE FEDERATION OF CLWYD ANGLING CLUBS
On behalf of
THE ANGLERS OF WALES – VISITING AND LOCAL
(60,000 anglers purchase rod licences in Wales each year, many thousands more are sea anglers.
Visiting anglers add thousands more to these numbers)
TO
THE MEMBERS OF THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT:
Please provide the funding, direction and performance indicators to the Environment Agency Wales that will allow them to restore the levels of Fisheries Enforcement Officers to the whole of Wales equivalent to the historical numbers at the time when North Wales alone had 24 full time officers. This would mean an equivalent today of 48 enforcement officers full time jobs in rural North Wales alone, in lieu of the current paltry and inadequate 8. Allow them the facilities to protect that wonderful Welsh heritage the benefits of which Members of the Assembly are currently actively starting to reap.
In return all anglers, angling clubs and associations will be pleased to work with the Environment Agency Wales to assist in the protection of the waters and fish life of the rivers and coastal waters of Wales.
Signed.
Allan Cuthbert Research Officer for the Clwyd Federation of Angling Clubs
Actively supported by:
Steve Evans of the Sea Anglers Conservation Network; British Anglers Sport Fishing Society.
Paul Hopwood of the Sea Trout Fishing Forum and Sea Trout Fishing.net
Those many anglers who have provided positive encouragement.
Copy to members of the Government Fishing Group – Westminster
From
THE FEDERATION OF CLWYD ANGLING CLUBS
On behalf of
THE ANGLERS OF WALES – VISITING AND LOCAL
A. Introduction:
On 27th October 2005 Environment Agency Wales published a paper entitled ‘Wales’ environment proves perfect bait for visiting anglers’. The paper quoted figures published by Carwyn , Minister for Countryside, Environment and Planning relating to the first year of the ‘Fishing Wales’ partnership between Environment Agency Wales and Wales Tourist Board which the Assembly has agreed to fund to the amount of £2.4 million over three years.
The first year’s £800,000 investment had resulted in £27.3 million boost to the Welsh economy; that being only part of the total of £69 million that fishing trips to Wales had generated in the financial year 2004 to 2005. (See Appendix A)
A £27.3 million boost for an outlay of only £800,000. Fantastic! Proof, if ever proof were needed, of the importance of angling to Wales.
Yet Environment Agency Wales is being starved of funding, or is being set priorities that take its resources away from protecting the very resource that attracts all these visiting anglers that generate these revenues to the Welsh economy.
Poachers in Wales are now free to roam as they will, with little or no fear of apprehension. You are allowing one of the greatest assets of this great country to be depleted at an ever increasing rate! Now is the time to start to stop the rot and take action to protect one of Wales’s great heritages.
B. What The Assembly and the Environment Agency Wales are telling your constituents!
Note: all references in this document are taken either from the Welsh Assembly Government or the Environment Agency web sites. Copies of which are included in the appendices.
1. Welsh Fisheries (Appendix C)
Fishing has long been important in Wales - we have some of Britain’s richest and most famous salmon and sea trout rivers. In the last few decades, as water quality has improved, high quality fisheries have begun to return, even in the rivers of the industrial south.
2. Managing freshwater fisheries (Appendix D)
Tourism and recreation are extremely important to Wales bringing in an estimated £1.3 billion in 1994
Angling is an important component of this economic benefit to Wales. The 61,000 people in Wales who purchase licences to fish for salmon, sea trout, brown trout, coarse fish and eels. This is only half the people who fish in Wales with the other 50% comprising visitors: Rural economies benefit by well over £100 million from angler expenditure in Wales. With half a million people making fishing at least a part of their holidays here.
3. EAW annual report and accounts 2005 (Appendix E)
The quality of our rivers and bathing waters is a good indicator of a clean environment. It affects our health and can help Wales’ economy by encouraging tourism – which generates over £800 million a year.
4. EAW website 20/3/06 (Appendix F)
A good quality environment is a pre-requisite for a thriving fishery so, when people see a salmon leaping, they know that there's not much wrong with their local river. Of course this doesn't happen by itself and Environment Agency Wales spends millions of pounds each year, part of which comes from the sale of rod licences, on managing and improving fisheries.
5. Managing freshwater fisheries (Appendix D)
Under the Environment Act 1995 the Agency has a general duty to "maintain, improve and develop salmon, trout, freshwater fish and eel fisheries" and to consult its Fisheries, Ecology, Recreation Advisory Committee as to the manner in which the general duties are performed.
6. Environmental Crimewatch initiative (See Appendix B)
A project aimed at addressing environmental crime through a targeted enforcement approach and by working together with other partners who fight environmental crime or who are affected by it.
Partners involved in Environmental Crimewatch include Environment Agency Wales, Welsh Assembly Government, local authorities covering North Wales, Chester and the Wirral, North Wales Police, Countryside Council for Wales, National Farmers Union, large landowners in the area. Other relevant partners are being approached.
The project is managed by Environment Agency Wales
7. Extra fish planned for UK rivers. (Appendix G)
The Environment Agency plans to increase the number of fish in English and Welsh rivers in a bid to improve the natural habitat and boost business.
The agency's strategy builds on an initiative in Wales and aims to increase the number of fish in rivers by 2011.
The report also details the "significant" social benefits of angling.
One scheme in Rowheath Park, Birmingham launched three years ago introduced children who had been involved in youth crime and truancy to fishing, it said.
About 98% of those on the scheme have not re-offended.
C: What is happening in reality?
The numbers of salmon entering Welsh rivers is declining to such an extent that the Environment Agency Wales is now recommending that anglers apply a catch and release policy because the stocks are so severely depleted. The Agency is also spending large sums to ensure that the quality of the water in Welsh rivers is improved or maintained where the quality is high. Actions are being taken in all manner of ways to ensure the water in Wales and the environment related thereto are monitored and action is taken to minimise the potential effects of pollution and environmental degradation. The Assembly and the Environment Agency are doing a great deal of good works to protect and improve Welsh rivers. However little is being done to protect the fish that live in those rivers!
There is a legal requirement for all anglers to purchase a fishing licence and an obligation imposed upon the Environment Agency Wales to ensure that anglers comply with that legal requirement. As in so many other areas of public life the Agency and its staff are set performance indicators by way of which to show how well or otherwise they are carrying out their duties. To meet these performance targets Agency staff visit well attended angling venues such as large and popular lakes and there they check for anglers fishing without the appropriate licence. A quick and relatively easy way to catch the wrong doers and to achieve compliance with the performance targets! However the damage to the fish stocks and to the Welsh economy is being done in the rivers and their estuaries where poachers are now free to roam at will well aware that there chances of being caught are minimal. The Environment Agency make much of their successes in bringing to the courts offenders apprehended whilst illegally fishing, however scrutiny of those cases show that the offenders have been apprehended either on popular and large venues or on estuarial waters where the perpetrators were foolishly over confident of evading apprehension. Nothing is heard of success in apprehending offenders higher in our river systems, where the real damage is done. Salmon that are returning from Iceland and the Arctic waters to the rivers of their birth are easy prey to poachers. The fish lay in shoals in the river pools, the water for the most part gin clear, waiting for conditions to be favourable for them to swim up river to the small feeder streams where they will mate and lay their eggs. Whilst in the pools they are easy prey to poachers armed with nets, snares or poison to name but a small part of their armoury. The clearing of a singled pool by poachers can earn them perhaps 20 fish with an average weight of say 8lbs that sell for £2.00 a pound: £320.00. Not bad for one nights work and the figures quoted are in every respect conservative! To catch 20 salmon would take many anglers a fishing lifetime, but such is their fascination and dedication to the sport that they persist.
If you ask the police or the Environment Agency Wales what is the poaching situation in Wales? They will tell you that there is no poaching problem! The police will tell you that they have few, if any, reported incidents. The Environment Agency Wales will say much the same because their emergency free 0800 hotline telephone system just does not function. If you ask the angling population or many members of the rural community about poachers and poaching, they will tell you that it is rife! A simple example is given by a member of a local angling club, who is also a teacher and local rugby coach. The Environment Agency Wales completed the installation of a new fish pass costing £280,000 on the river Clywedog at Bontuchel in North Wales in the summer of 2005. Whilst coaching his rugby players the local club member was told, in all innocence, by one of his young charges, that he and other local lads were having great fun taking salmon from the river above the newly installed fish pass. The Environment Agency was promptly advised of this matter. There has to date (April 2006) been no reported prosecution or other action reported either in the press or to the club member! Why? The front line staff at the Environment Agency Wales is, for the most part, highly dedicated and hard working. However the fisheries Enforcement Officers are now charged not only with protecting our rivers but also our countryside generally from fly tippers and other environmental polluters! They are also rightly protected by current health and safety regulations that restrict the Enforcement Officers from loan working.
To give an indication of the workload imposed upon the Enforcement Officers working for the Agency in North Wales alone, the following statistics may be helpful:
Current figures:
Area of operations: From Borth, below Machynlleth in central Cardigan Bay in the West around to the Dee Estuary in the East and all inland areas down to Wrexham and Ruthin and back across to the coast in the West.
Length of rivers: Approximately 3,470 miles of main and other rivers that fall within the Northern Area. (Figure provided by the EAW)
Number of Enforcement Officers: 8 (one vacancy yet to be filled as at April 2006)
Number of pairs to carry out Enforcement duties: 4
Duties include policing all waters rivers, lakes, estuaries and all coastal waters also environmental pollution over the whole of the above specified land mass.
Historical figures.
Area of operations: as above
Length of rivers: as above
Number of Enforcement Officers: 24
Number of pairs to carry out Enforcement duties: Lone working did not apply so to comply with current health and safety requirement the current comparable number would have to be 48
Duties include policing all waters rivers, lakes, estuaries and all coastal waters.
The staffing levels of Enforcement Officers have been similarly reduced throughout the whole of Wales.
Note: Enforcement Officers are deemed to be those officers empowered with the powers of arrest and apprehension as would apply to a police officer plus the additional powers of what used to known as a River Bailiff. (There has been anecdotal evidence of EAW officers having been misrepresented in an effort to provide misleading information!)
Given the length of poachable rivers in North Wales for example, it is not surprising that there are no reported poaching incidents! Poachers were, in the past, sought out by the then National Rivers Authority Enforcement Officers. Intelligence was gathered by Enforcement Officers by way of their local contacts. They knew the community, the rivers and the some suitable and therefore likely poaching locations!
One of Wales’s most valuable natural resources is being squandered!
“Results from research carried out to measure the effectiveness of the Fishing Wales marketing campaigns show that those requesting a Fishing Wales brochure took a total of 58,687 fishing trips to Wales worth £69 million to the Welsh economy in 2004-2005” Figures provided by the Environment Agency Wales 27 October 2005.
D: The way forward.
Wales is a beautiful land with a mountainous hinterland and relatively narrow coastal strip upon which most of its population rely for homes and work. The rivers of Wales flow from those hills to the sea whence the salmon return from their sojourn in the artic waters to breed. These fish are a precious heritage that we are duty bound to protect for their own sake and for the sake of the people of Wales to whom they bring so much and can bring much more.
Unemployment is a major issue, particularly in North Wales which the European Union has designated a socially deprived area. The migratory fish stocks in our rivers provide an easy and lucrative form of income for those in the area who lack meaning full work, live on befits and turn to crime to supplement their incomes. The additional jobs that could be created in bringing the levels of policing and protection of our rivers back to those previous levels would be real jobs desperately required in areas where jobs are at a premium. Those employed doing these jobs will protect the source of the multi million pound revenue income generated by home as well as visiting anglers.
There is currently a declining stock of Salmon and Sea Trout in Welsh rivers. This loss of stock is due to many factors: Irish drift nets slaughtering the fish on the high seas, depletion of the natural food species; loss due to seal attack and the general depletion by a myriad other natural predators. Having survived all that and returned to their home rivers, the fish then have to run the gauntlet of poachers determined to take the fish by any means and then to sell on the black-market for a pittance of the real value of the fish.
The salmon rivers of Scotland are responsible for billions of pounds in angling revenue to Scotland and the Scottish Parliament is actively encouraging the protection of its rivers and tourism based upon angling. In all the Scottish tourism advertising angling is always predominant. Scotland and its salmon are so well associated that even the supermarkets advertising salmon are keen to associate it with Scotland! Ireland is similarly proud to include angling as a tourist attraction in all its publicity. Why not Wales?
In presenting this appeal to Members of The Assembly Government there is no implied or intended criticism of the Assembly Government of the Environment Agency Wales, simply a wish to draw Members attention to the current situation ‘on the ground’ as anglers in Wales see it, and to ask Members to look at the priorities being set for the Environment Agency Wales. Welsh anglers are appealing to Assembly Members to impose on the Environment Agency Wales performance indicators that require the Agency to actively seek out poacher. By poachers we mean those seeking to take fish from our inland and coastal waters by illegal methods not only those fishing without the appropriate fishing licences for which current performance indicators are already in place. Poaching, by its very nature is unlikely to be spotted by either anglers or the general public. It is usually carried out in isolated areas well away from prying eyes. Poachers can only be apprehended after collecting intelligence from local communities and by spotting tell tale signs along river banks. There are presently 4 pairs of officers responsible for 3,470 miles of river in North Wales. This equates to 867.5 each and takes no account of the hundreds of miles of coastline!! This is to protect on of Wales’s great heritages!!
The people of Wales and those many thousands of anglers who come to fish its waters deserve much better!
APPEAL TO THE MEMBERS OF THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT
From
THE FEDERATION OF CLWYD ANGLING CLUBS
On behalf of
THE ANGLERS OF WALES – VISITING AND LOCAL
(60,000 anglers purchase rod licences in Wales each year, many thousands more are sea anglers.
Visiting anglers add thousands more to these numbers)
TO
THE MEMBERS OF THE WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT:
Please provide the funding, direction and performance indicators to the Environment Agency Wales that will allow them to restore the levels of Fisheries Enforcement Officers to the whole of Wales equivalent to the historical numbers at the time when North Wales alone had 24 full time officers. This would mean an equivalent today of 48 enforcement officers full time jobs in rural North Wales alone, in lieu of the current paltry and inadequate 8. Allow them the facilities to protect that wonderful Welsh heritage the benefits of which Members of the Assembly are currently actively starting to reap.
In return all anglers, angling clubs and associations will be pleased to work with the Environment Agency Wales to assist in the protection of the waters and fish life of the rivers and coastal waters of Wales.
Signed.
Allan Cuthbert Research Officer for the Clwyd Federation of Angling Clubs
Actively supported by:
Steve Evans of the Sea Anglers Conservation Network; British Anglers Sport Fishing Society.
Paul Hopwood of the Sea Trout Fishing Forum and Sea Trout Fishing.net
Those many anglers who have provided positive encouragement.
Copy to members of the Government Fishing Group – Westminster
