The Environment Agency & the River Tone

[John Bailey]

Dominic Garnett has really bounced back into my life. He told me, almost tearfully, about the destruction of a stretch of his local River Tone last week. Well, as some of you might have realised, the sad tale has been taken up by the Guardian, the Independent, and the BBC. I say “sad tale”. It is much worse than that. “Ludicrous vandalism” would be a better phrase. As Dominic points out, this “work”, if it can be called that, has taken place just when the birds were thinking of nesting in the now-destroyed bankside trees, and when fish were preparing to spawn in the now-destroyed gravels. This type of “improvement” ripped the heart out of my Norfolk rivers in the 1970s and 1980s, and I really thought I’d seen the back of it.

Once again, we really have to ask whether the EA deserves the licence fees we will soon be faced with paying them. I’d suggest that the answer becomes clearer by the week.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Once again, we really have to ask whether the EA deserves the licence fees we will soon be faced with paying them. I’d suggest that the answer becomes clearer by the week.

The answer for me at least, is, yes especially considering what practical and workable alternatives are possible.

 

[John Aston]

Oh do grow up JB - you pay tax not because the taxpayer feels the taxing authority 'deserves' it but because you are legally required to do so. You can't cherry pick the law by encouraging more pollution prosecutions for the EA while loftily dismissing the fees you are legally bound to pay them. .

The Tone issue was featured in The Times today and is a disgrace , on that we can agree .

But it would help if you would respond to comments made in response to the views you have posted publicly on here on the EA .

 

[steve2]

Must admit I have never understood just how trees along a river bank cause flooding. Building next to rivers and on flood plains is the reason houses get flooded.

 

[rayner]

A few fish or peoples homes. No contest.

 

[Ray Roberts]

A few fish or peoples homes. No contest.

Sad but true. Choose to buy a home on what has traditionally been a flood plain and it ends up as someone else’s fault when you are up to your nuts in dirty water.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[John Bailey]

Return To The Tone

Did I go OTT with my comments on the EA “work” down on the Tone? In the Guardian, Dominic Garnett is quoted as saying it is "heartbreaking to see the destruction of the places you love. It’s like they have taken an old hippie and given him a buzz cut. It is scorched earth tactics.” Film maker Mark Barrow goes further, saying this is “complete devastation courtesy of the EA. Scorched earth work the Russian army would be proud of.”

Dominic points out that fish had already been moving to these gravels in preparation to spawn. Certainly around me, both chub and pike are doing the same thing, probably because of the relatively mild winter. How can dredging a sensitive area of river at a sensitive time of the year be applauded?

We move to birds. I have a wood outside my house about the size of that demolished along the Tone, give or take. I watch the birds there most hours of the day. There are roughly 200 birds resident, belonging to roughly 20 species. Because of the mild weather, again, they are showing pre-nesting activity. IF that wood were to be uprooted now, those birds would find it nigh on impossible to settle in new territory, certainly in time for this spring’s nesting. It is true the good farmers around me are hedge-trimming at the moment, but the key is in the word “trimming”. The birds are not at all inconvenienced by this, and will benefit from increased growth in a few weeks. Moreover, some farmers are even taking the trouble to shape the hedges into a roof-like inverted V, which is even more bird-friendly as rain is channeled away more easily. THAT is environmental concern, not this.

What is the right time for river management to be carried out, I am asked? “Management” is the key word here. It has seemed to many of us that there has been an on-going conflict within the EA between Fisheries and Drainage. I know Norfolk intimately, and the Inland Drainage Board thought it was a good idea to dredge out feeder streams and ditches in April and May! Even more recently, the IDB has carried out work that has demoralised those good folk in Fisheries who preach the habitat mantra eternally. How can you have good habitat when years of good work by Mother Nature is allowed to be destroyed in days?

Should Dominic and Mark simply shrug and let this go unremarked? Should they apologise for their comments? Should we allow drainage engineers in the EA free rein to do as they wish? Do we want the dark days of the Seventies and Eighties back again, when rivers were cut into canals that simply flushed water to the sea?

 

[LPP]

View attachment 19404

Dominic Garnett has really bounced back into my life. He told me, almost tearfully, about the destruction of a stretch of his local River Tone last week. Well, as some of you might have realised, the sad tale has been taken up by the Guardian, the Independent, and the BBC. I say “sad tale”. It is much worse than that. “Ludicrous vandalism” would be a better phrase. As Dominic points out, this “work”, if it can be called that, has taken place just when the birds were thinking of nesting in the now-destroyed bankside trees, and when fish were preparing to spawn in the now-destroyed gravels. This type of “improvement” ripped the heart out of my Norfolk rivers in the 1970s and 1980s, and I really thought I’d seen the back of it.

Once again, we really have to ask whether the EA deserves the licence fees we will soon be faced with paying them. I’d suggest that the answer becomes clearer by the week.

I saw this and immediately knew the f..wits have really confirmed their true colours and total lack of understanding of anything!
Just a few days ago I was casting lures for pike on the Wye, contemplating the fly rod for them too.....leading to maybe casting soon for salmon, even without any realistic expectation, of course. It is soon to time to renew the EA licence, the expensive one for salmon for maybe the 35th consecutive year.........

Then this -------------f...wits............................

Licence? My a..e!

 

[John Bailey]

My Last Word On The Tone

I think most of us were broadly in agreement that the EA has treated the Tone with cavalier disregard, judging by the majority of comments that came in. However, I do take note of the comment that it is little use wailing to like-minded individuals on sites like these.

Firstly, I am not sure about that. If we don’t keep these issues burning bright amongst ourselves, then who is going to keep the good fight going? In my experience, it is all too easy to sit back, accept that nothing will change and, as a result, do nothing.

Second, even if only a couple of people take the issue further, then good will have been done. Let’s look at how the whole question of river management can be taken further.

Join/listen to/support the Angling Trust... their website is full of campaigning issues with suggestions how you can make your voice heard.

Write to your MP... this is not hard and a five minute email can get your displeasure across. This is a good gauge of how well your MP represents you, and how you should vote next time round. Mine got back to me in thirty minutes and we are fishing together next month.

Write to your local paper... eg The Hereford Times. They are looking for stories like this, and showing your interest keeps the debate going with more chance of success.

Contact your regional EA fisheries team. I should think these folk in Norfolk have breathed a sigh of relief now I am living 250 miles to the West. I badgered them at every twist and turn, and I have to say that generally they listened. Credit where it is due.

Join the Rivers Trust. The Wye & Usk Foundation. Your local river trusts and societies. I agree many of these are talking shops, but talk can lead to action. Keeping silent and reaching for the TV remote is not the way to see our rivers improve, surely?

 

[Peter Jacobs]

I am not convinced that any analysis of the 8 replies to this thread can be described as "I think most of us were broadly in agreement that the EA has treated the Tone with cavalier disregard, judging by the majority of comments that came in."

It seems to me that the author seems to continually rally against the EA and always the nub of this being the join/support the Angling Trust" strap line.

The author and I will never agree on that as I personally think the Trust already receive too much of the licence fee.

I also maintain that the scientifically qualified and professional staff at the EA are infinitely better suited and placed to solve the problems than any in the Trust might be.

The EA are a government deartment and have a very wide set of responsibilties and there would be obvious clashes and cross responsbilties, and indeed legal problems if the EA were to have the fisheries brief stripped from them and goven to an outside body.

 

[nottskev]

Contacting the EA can be illuminating. I once wrote - late 90's - to ask how we should account for the dismal fishing on the lower Welsh Dee. The reply, and I wish I still had it, informed me that we couldn't expect much better as the Dee is "at the northerly limit for recruitment of coarse fish".

The Dee becomes tidal at Chester, which is south of Manchester and Sheffield!

Asking the same question 20 years later about a different river (further south, lol, and previously famous for fabulous coarse fishing), drew the answer that upgraded sewage treatment had improved the water quality, possibly making the habitat less suitable for coarse fish.

There you go. One river's in the wrong place, the other one's too clean.

 

[steve2]

Fish and animals will always be bottom of the list way below land drainage, and even the dumping of sewage. With the amount of new builds planned even more land drainage and river work will take place to stop flooding on flood plains. Hopefully straightening of rivers like drainage engineers did in the past won't happen again.

 

[mikench]

The picture of the river bank denuded of trees took me by surprise. I believed and still do that trees retain carbon, slow global warning, prevent bank erosion and provide habitat for birds and insects. I could understand the vandalism being carried out by ignorant landowners but not an organisation of government curiously called the Environment Agency to whom we pay taxes i.e. A licence fee to fund their endeavours in looking after the environment.

This link provides an overview of the value of trees.

Can trees and woods help reduce flooding? - Woodland Trust

Climate change brings more extreme weather events. By using native trees and woods we can improve flood risk management to lessen the effects of flooding.

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

I assume someone ie one or more of our crusading journalists have asked the EA why they did this and what the justification for it was. It seems to be an action completely at odds with what I thought I knew.

 

[fishface1]

I guess it can’t be all bad for Dominic as he’ll get to raise his journalistic profile and possibly sell a few more Angling Times.

I wonder what the local fishing club think of it? We often hear complaints of rivers being over grown without adequate swims and access to the water. Maybe they were consulted and thought the work suitable?

Does anyone know what club it is and if they have a website where there might be more information?

 

[nottskev]

I find it hard to imagine a local fishing club endorsing such wholesale removal of bankside trees and bushes. Suggesting they might have sounds like a search for a rather dubious fig-leaf for the EA. Suggesting Dominic Garnett welcomes the publicity for personal profile and sales reasons just looks like a smear to me.

The stretch is said to be in Taunton, and while there is nothing on the local club's fb about it, there are articles in praise of a free stretch in the area, and this may be the one in question.

River Tone – Taunton – Total Fishing

www.total-fishing.com

Here are some pics (before work) from other articles on the EA work there. I can't see that this stretch of river is inaccessible or asking for a bulldozer. Perhaps the EA could have provided, if there is one, a more convincing rationale for their actions here? Anyone can imagine that dead trees in the water, eg, may obstruct flow, but are we not told that waterside trees help, among other positives, to mitigate problems of excess water?

 

[steve2]

To be honest I have never heard of Dominic Garnett apart from the odd mention on here. Which I see as a problem in that in angling we have no well knowns fighting our corner. What pity Chris Packham isn't a angler.
There are many that are happy to fish waters without trees and snags, it stops them loosing tackle.

 

[nottskev]

To be honest I have never heard of Dominic Garnett apart from the odd mention on here. Which I see as a problem in that in angling we have no well knowns fighting our corner. What pity Chris Packham isn't a angler.
There are many that are happy to fish waters without trees and snags, it stops them loosing tackle.

"I've never heard of x" cuts both ways. Either x doesn't do much or someone isn't bothering to look. I followed up this story by checking the bloke's blog and it sheds some light on the story in the press. Anyone interested can too

EA Sports: Chainsaws, chamber music and perch fishing - DG Fishing

What a crazy past few days for me, with my fishing time limited by the fallout from destructive Environment Agency work and anglers’ demand for answers. More on this shortly- and you can also read about it in the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Mail, and BBC! You can also hear a radio...

dgfishing.co.uk

 

[bullet]

Are you serious, JB, when you say join the Wye and Usk foundation?
In over 20 years they are supposed to have been improving the Wye and it has just gone downhill.
About as irrelevant and useless as it gets, and yet they always seem to be the mouthpiece when the media want an interview about the river.
Just to back this up, Why don't you stick this on the Salmon Fishing Forum, it might prove enlightening??

 

[bullet]

With regard to Dominic Garnett, he's well known locally and an avid supporter of various Clubs, chips in and does his bit.
He's also very approachable via email and always keen to talk fishing and/ or environmental matters.

 

[nottskev]

With regard to Dominic Garnett, he's well known locally and an avid supporter of various Clubs, chips in and does his bit.
He's also very approachable via email and always keen to talk fishing and/ or environmental matters.

I thought I recognised the name, and I found this book on my shelves. Nothing new for someone who's fished canals since 1960 something, but obviously written by someone who loves fishing.