Is there a bit of an elephant in the room here (keeping the otter company...)
That being that this has pretty much everything to do with the interests of people who catch specimen sized barbel, and less to do with a genuine concern about nature? Or even the interests of most anglers.
I've raised this as an idea before on threads about otters, but could it be possible that the generally increasing size of barbel in small rivers like the kennet, Bristol avon, ouse... fish growing to those sizes were unnatural to begin with? A situation greatly enhanced by the population crash decades earlier of the predator that would have kept those stocks healthier (and more numerous)?
The petition is called for by an angler with a great association with one species. Even more than that, the loudest voice in trying to bring attention to the decline of one species. I completely understand why he's going about that, but I'm not sure how well the pursuit of specimen sized barbel really represents anglers nationwide? Many of us don't even fish for this species.
I don't remember any voices of concern being raised as the traveller and co got caught again and again and hit the front pages of the angling press... no voices of concern to suggest that without smaller fish present, the population wouldn't last forever. Seems the biggest problem barbel have is getting jiggy. Fish recruitment, i.e. successful breeding and clear multi generational populations of fish - that's the secret to a healthy population. How many 2lb fish are getting caught, you should have to fight through several to get to your 12lb fish, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case on any river in the country with the exception of the wye, severn and maybe trent (though Calverton has a lot to play in to that population).
We shouldn't be looking at otters, in my opinion. We should be looking at the habitat of the rivers in question, which are silty, low flowing, algal-blooming, chemically altered .... the list goes on. Is there anything we can do to change the state of them? (I would argue in the case of the Kennett and B. Avon, they're probably ruined beyond hope).
The fact that an otter can decimate the population of barbel in a river in a year or two suggests to me that the population of barbel was already hanging by a thread to begin with. Our interference with the habitat is what's crashed the barbel population, the otters have just accelerated the deaths of old fish by a year or two.
We also need to be mindful of how we're perceived by the general public. Will they care that the largest specimens of a particular species have been eaten? Likely not. They might get more interested in this if the species in question was "close to extinction"... which the barbel quite clearly isn't!
Let me just close this by saying, I love catching barbel! Truly, one of my favourite fish. However, they're really not the be all and end all, and if my angling ever got to the point where I was only bothered about one species - and would happily kill otters to enhance my chances (and I know, the petition says non-lethal, but these threads always bring out those that would advocate shooting them) - then I will give my tackle away and get a new hobby!
