This headline in The Times the other day made me sit up:
Angling Trust calls for cull of otters eating too much fish
Apart from the slightly infelicitous use of English (shouldn’t that be too many fish?), I can’t really believe anglers want to dispatch otters wholesale.
My experience of anglers is that they are mostly harmless folk who simply love fish. If there is a point of criticism its that maybe they sometimes love them just a bit too much.
And it’s understandable, I suppose, if you’ve spent a lot of money getting a good lake full of fish ready for people to catch, to be upset when an otter comes along and grabs your prize (and beloeved) specimens.
But I can’t help thinking that the headline probably wasn’t quite what the Angling Trust really meant to say. The Angling Trust is a respectable organisation that campaigns for anglers and does much good helping to protect rivers from pollution.
The article was meant to publicise their lobbying plans for 2010 – a worthy document but, like all such documents (our own at Pond Conservation included), unlikely to be your first choice for a bedtime read, unless you were trying to overcome a really long-term problem with insomnia. Maybe the headline was just a way of getting attention?
I checked the report – it’s online here – and the nearest it gets to the alarmist (and alarming) headline is to say that the Angling Trust will ‘Lobby the Environment Agency for more funds to……..support the cost of fencing and other deterrents at still water fisheries to keep out otters.’
Sounds OK to me, and no mention of a cull – which is good news.
