Otters. They’re here to stay and angling had better buck up its ideas and learn to live with them. There. I’ve said it.
Rod Sturdy made some very good points in his opinion piece about media coverage of our furred, feathered and scaly friends and – this may surprise those who follow my usual rants – I’m in broad agreement with much of what Rod says. Fish and fishing get a raw deal from an often amateurish and hugely London-centric media.
If I may single out a BBC programme myself, Countryfile is the one which, for me, stands proudly representing a wider trend to favour celebrity over intelligence and completely misrepresent the subject. Adam the farmer aside, the clothing they wear alone tells you the presenters know sod all about being outdoors; all fluoro puffa jackets, rainbow scarves and tasselled leather boots.
In one episode, they wheeled out a large-chested former model to take us on a tour of Cotehele, in Cornwall. She constantly referred to it as a National Park when she meant National Trust property and, on meeting the miller, she asked whether he milled plain flour. All of this was left in the final edit, presumably by people who think a walk in Hyde Park is ‘getting back to nature.’
While Rod implores us all to write to the BBC and complain, I say don’t bother. You might just as well write your letter and flush it down the toilet. I have written dozens of letters of complaint to the BBC. I’ve wanted to write others, but if there’s one thing the BBC keeps secret, it’s contact details for its producers. And when you do write… nothing… ever… happens.
And here there’s a parallel with the subject of otters. The recolonisation of England by otters (and this is not, contrary to angling lore, the result of on-going reintroduction) is by popular consent, including mine. In this Rod and I differ. But whether Ron and others would rather not have them around, it’s tough luck. We’d just as well campaign for a return to the days when teenagers liked nothing better than to bowl a hoop down the street with a stick as campaign for licensed otter shooting.
Wholesale control of native predators is something which belongs in the dustbin of history. If you think it’s OK to be poisoning raptors and trapping stoats, you must also agree with double-figure pike being slung up the bank to die. Do you remember the arguments we have used for years to protect pike? They’re part of the ecology… everything in balance… should be proud to catch them. Well, touché, pal. You’re the biter bit…
I have great sympathy with river fisheries which have lost big fish to otters. It happens. But, you know, otters maintained a foothold even in the darkest days on many Scottish and Welsh rivers, and their existence was hardly mentioned; the Wye, for example, was a great fishery despite the presence of otters. If it’s not the river it was in the ‘70s, it’s not because of otters. If angling focused its energies on understanding less obvious threats to fish and fishing, it might find a welcome reception among the ‘million voices for birds’ of the RSPB which Ron mentions.
To be fair to Rod, otters were not a central theme of his article; anglers were. He’s absolutely right that we should hand our leaders at Angling Trust the power they need to get things done, and to represent angling where, at present, it is wilfully ignored. I’m instinctively repelled by the idea of corporate entities speaking for me but what’s worse is having no voice at all.
I pay the Angling Trust. And while I have had, and will have, the occasional run-in with ATr, they have, to their credit, always written back with a well-reasoned reply. I also pay for the BBC. To its shame, it considers itself above criticism….
