| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
He is author of several fishing books, including the long awaited ‘Richard Walker – Biography of and Angling Legend’. He has been an angling writer in newspapers and magazines for nigh on four decades. Barrie takes a keen interest in angling politics. Away from angling Barrie is a Professor in Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College and a curator of the Sedgwick Museum of Geology. |
The RSPB and anglers just don’t mixI noticed one of those disputes, which one sees at intervals between anglers and the RSPB. The two interests do not mix too well as I have often pointed out. And I must say that most of the blame can and should be laid at the door of the RSPB.In this latest case, anglers on the Isle of Wight have lost their fishing to the RSPB. This body bought the land surrounding the club’s section of the river Yar: the area is, it seems, now an SSSI and the subject of an EU Birds and Habitat Directive. The last should not count because a directive from the EU is not law and need not be made law. SSSI’s are a complete menace, totally outdated in function in almost all cases. The RSPB denied being anti-angling. However, how can they argue otherwise, because every single time they get involved with a water, anglers are excluded (as anglers that is – they can walk there, with dogs off their leads! This is directly prejudicial against angling and is selective against angling). The RSPB claimed that their participation in ‘The Blueprint for Water’ shows their pro-angling credentials. It doesn’t. It shows that after many decades of doing nothing about water they have finally put their name to something: but it’s to water, not angling. They point out that anglers would disturb breeding wading birds. What rubbish. Anglers disturb birds less than any other human activity in the countryside and as the river Yar is, you know, a river there’s a close season on it! The MP Martin Salter was quoted as being unhappy about the outcome. For once, I agree with him. He says “…it remains in angling’s interests to work with RSPB.” In fact, it doesn’t – not unless the RSPB makes a sea change in its attitude to angling. And whilst we are on this subject why is Martin Salter backing the RSPB against anglers in the form the National Union of British Anglers (NUBA). Alan Suttie is the founder of NUBA, as well as being an RSPB member (a rethink there Alan?) and it seems he asked them some awkward questions. Martin Salter is quoted as saying “…the last thing they (the RSPB) need are damn fool questions.” Well if the RSPB can’t or won’t deal with a few questions that seems pretty tatty to me. Are not organisations supposed to be answerable these days? Or is Martin Salter just anti-NUBA? I don’t know about you, but after 50 yeas, and rising, of angling administration, I can’t see angling unity ever happening. There are just too many fragile egos around. I have said plenty about the RSPB in the past, as well as above, so, after some comments further on the current Isle of Wight crisis I’ll keep quiet for a bit. I think the points I have made in the past about the RSPB being anti-angling – even though they deny this – are amply proved by their recent statements on the Isle of Wight case. For example, John Clare of the RSPB is quoted in Angling Times (2 October) as saying, “The RSPB is not anti angling. Of the 202 sites we control angling is only feasible at 55 at the most.” On whose say so exactly Mr Claire? Of the RSPB sites I know myself, where angling is banned, it would be comfortably possible on all of them. Of the 55 sites, where angling is ‘feasible’, then “Fishing is allowed at 19 of those sites.” Why only 19? That’s 36 sites where angling is ‘feasible’ yet banned. He then goes on to say, “The Society feels these figures provide concrete proof that we are not anti angling.” Really? I’d say they proved the opposite. Someone also tried to pass the buck from RSPB to Natural England – which organisation promptly denied that it had instructed anybody to ban angling. Let’s get right to the nitty gritty of this. Anglers do not frighten birds half as much as walkers, dog walkers, runners, cyclists, canoeists, sailors or other boaters. Any angler knows that because he is quietly in place the birds come to him and binoculars, which we all carry, are often hardly necessary. Show a bird a dog, or a walking human, and it’s off as fast as it can go. I’m not saying that these other activities should be banned – in fact, I’m of the opinion that none of them should be – but angling most certainly should not be. And I hope that that is the stance our representatives are saying forcefully. We cannot tolerate selective banning of angling. Japanese Science – trout from salmonDid you all see the report that Japanese scientists are trying – indeed, have succeeded, – in producing trout from salmon? This is background research towards their ultimate goal, which is to produce tuna from something else! Of course, if the seas had enough tuna, none of this would be necessary. Naturally, if they get around to producing barbel from RSPB members then I might change my attitude a bit.Eastern Europeans and The BillDo you watch The Bill? I do when my mind has gone dead for the day, as happens often these days. Recently some local club anglers were done by the Bill cops for beating up an Eastern European poacher. Very topical, and it’s going to happen isn’t it? In this particular (fictional) case the anglers were thugs anyway, so the police action was justified; but the writers of The Bill ought to take pause here, because the deep-seated cause of an Eastern European being beaten up is, or will be, the frustration felt by anglers over the complete lack of activity by the police, and the Environment Agency to forcefully protect the rightful and law-abiding interest of the anglers. The police these days seem to look for easy peasy results such as a youth hitting another youth with a pellet from an elastic band, and so on.Sluggish reactions to developing problems – why?And why is it? God I do go on, I know – but why is it that those in authority always, without exception, react so sluggishly to developing problems. Let me run you through time a little. Remember the then Anglian Water and the relief channel zander? In the 1960s they denied categorically that zander were escaping out of the Relief Channel (or even that there were many in the RC) despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It was between 5 and 10 years before they acknowledged the fact. By then it was just a little too late to do anything even if anyone had wanted to. They did have their abortive cull, it is true, but that was too little, too late, and too pointless.Then think about cormorants! How long has this problem been with us? Certainly since the early to mid 1980s. When did authority begin to get to grips with it? Roundabout 2005/6 I’d say, and even then it was too little too late. Some quite serious and good work by the Environment Agency, which really pinpointed, with respect to two specific waters, what anglers had been saying for a decade, was somehow ditched and ignored. I suspect pressure was put on the EA by a powerful organisation. And so it goes on. When it comes to facing up to problems which face fish stocks or anglers, authority deliberately drags its heels, either through ignorance or, more likely, because it doesn’t want to get involved in a ‘borderline’ activity like angling. As someone recently said, if it were bluetits dying en masse, action would be taken. It’s exactly the same problem, with plundering of our fisheries by those of Eastern European extraction. Why they are doing it doesn’t matter. The appropriate authorities should have stopped it already, but only recently, after some five years of warnings, have they even recognised that there may be a problem. The problem is, of course, that it is we anglers who look after the fisheries. If it came out of the tax bill there would by more rapid action.
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