Alan, the crow,
I don’t have any magic answer .... and whilst only 20k people bother to be members of the AT then we’ve got zero chance.
As a comparison, I am very familiar with the badger cull. That has been approved as a long term experiment to determine if rates of Tb in cattle can be reduced. As such it is a trial.
There are c. 300k badgers in the UK, single thousands of otters.
The farmers union represents a significant majority of agricualtural land .... and food security is a government level issue. Unlike our sport catches.
Cows with Tb is itself an animal welfare issue.
There is still very active opposition to the badger culls.
Linking health of fisheries to wider biodiversity and pollution concerns is, in my view, the only way to get any political traction on this. The problem is that most of the ecological groups are likely to be anti or ambivalent to fishing .... as their concern is mainly warm-blooded charismatic mega fauna.
The people who share our concerns the most are likely to be the ones who want to ban fishing!
Like zander in the fens .... I think we will just have to wait for the ecological balance to be found again.
I don’t have any magic answer .... and whilst only 20k people bother to be members of the AT then we’ve got zero chance.
As a comparison, I am very familiar with the badger cull. That has been approved as a long term experiment to determine if rates of Tb in cattle can be reduced. As such it is a trial.
There are c. 300k badgers in the UK, single thousands of otters.
The farmers union represents a significant majority of agricualtural land .... and food security is a government level issue. Unlike our sport catches.
Cows with Tb is itself an animal welfare issue.
There is still very active opposition to the badger culls.
Linking health of fisheries to wider biodiversity and pollution concerns is, in my view, the only way to get any political traction on this. The problem is that most of the ecological groups are likely to be anti or ambivalent to fishing .... as their concern is mainly warm-blooded charismatic mega fauna.
The people who share our concerns the most are likely to be the ones who want to ban fishing!
Like zander in the fens .... I think we will just have to wait for the ecological balance to be found again.