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.
March 19, 2010 at 5:38 pm |
A simple answer to ‘do anglers want to kill otters’ would be yes. With the influx of otters into our countryside, comes many many problems.
We have no ‘wild’ animals that will hunt otters and keep the population to a natural level. Also on the same note, as otter are now a protected species, hunting them is illegal. whoever has implemented this ban is, in my eyes an idiot. Why are the fish not being protected? A large carp can be worth thousands and thousands of pounds. The otters come along to the lakes and rivers and gradually kill all fish, starting with the biggest.
People who have put all of their time and money into a lake and its stock have to watch as the otters destroy their livelehood in a matter of weeks or months. There will soon be many people taking matters into their own hands. Hats off to them I say.
All these animal lovers and the government say they have released otters back into the wild because they are supposed to be here. So are wolves but nobody is pushing to get wolves back into the wild. The only reason the otters are winning the fight is because otters are small and ‘cuddly’.
[Slightly edited for politeness]