The Angling Trust is seeking a relaxation of the law regarding the control of certain piscivorous predators, specifically cormorant, goosander and merganser, and has written to Richard Benyon MP, Minister for the Environment, to make its case.
I'm a fanatical angler and a member of the Trust, but believe it has overstepped the mark on this occasion. Sadly, when he is struggling to catch fish the average angler always sees predators as a convenient scapegoat. The reality, as I see it, is that while predators might exacerbate a problem, they are never the root cause.
There are many issues affecting freshwater fish populations at the moment: habitat degradation, abstraction, pollution in various forms (including endocrine disruptors) and not least anglers' own indulgence in stocking fish (often alien species) into waters where they would not naturally thrive and breed. In addition, I think the severe weather patterns of recent years could have had an impact - the floods of summer 2007 and the harsh winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11. But all this is irrelevant to most anglers, who think that if cormorants and otters could be shot on sight the situation would rapidly improve. A group of leading anglers has even gone as far as forming a Predator Action Group to campaign on the issue.
I just wanted to draw this to the attention of RSPB members in the hope that some of you might be tempted to fight the predators' corner, perhaps by writing to Richard Benyon MP to oppose The Angling Trust on this matter. Or perhaps this is something that should be tackled at the top level by the RSPB?
Natural predator vs natural prey. Pradators have evolved to catch the prey, prey have evolved to avoid them. Its basic biology. when we begin getting involved, hunting indisciminatley, stocking ponds for our pleasure, then that is when nature becomes unbalanced. As far as im concerned, oters, cormorants, mergansers and there needs are greater than that of the angler 'fun'